


Hereditary Sin

by SALJStella



Category: Saw (Movies)
Genre: Adam is a little shit, Alternate Universe - Teenagers, Angst, Child Abuse, Homophobia, M/M, Original Character(s), So much angst, as well as the not original ones, if that matters to ya, in fact all the original characters are fucked up somehow, lawrence is messed up, original character has sex addiction, so the angst is like super stupid and annoying, they messed up together, why do i only write miserable stuff, yeah they're teenagers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-27
Updated: 2017-09-19
Packaged: 2018-05-23 12:48:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 32
Words: 91,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6116964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SALJStella/pseuds/SALJStella
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Lawrence's eyes look so much like hers, and he hates it. Why couldn't they have been his first? Why did she have to have them, why does he need to be reminded where they come from?"</p><p>---</p><p>You inherit the sins, you inherit the pain. A story about giving up that inheritance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: Still Not a Shared Story

**Author's Note:**

> I posted this story years ago on my Fanfiction account, and like everyone else, eventually became embarrassed of ever having a Fanfiction account. So, here it is. It's revamped and retranslated, and hopefully better, but HEY WHAT DO I KNOW. 
> 
> This has... fuck all to do with the Saw movies, tbh. I'm simply borrowing the characters and being a dick towards them for the amusement of my very few readers. (y)

The first day of high school should be amazing.

That’s what Lawrence has heard. Or, maybe not ‘heard,’ his circles don’t really tell stories about their school years. But it’s what he imagined.

He can imagine waking up now, realizing that he’s late, but it’s no big deal.

Lawrence in his head doesn’t get late. It doesn’t happen. If the other Lawrence wakes up late, it’s fine, because he does a little magic hand wave that makes time slow down. He’ll turn day to night so he gets to sleep longer, or, he could’ve if he’d wanted to, but he doesn’t. He wants to go to school, because it’s his first day and he’ll meet new people, ambitious and interesting people, he’ll learn stuff.

But that’s another Lawrence.

Real Lawrence wakes up too late, and he can’t stop time, he can’t even look forward to the day even though he was so excited last night that he was practically jumping up and down. Because he wakes up to the sound of Louise, crying like a battered cat, covering her face with her hands.

Lawrence will never get used to waking up to that sound.

Instead of waking up slowly and calmly, like he was supposed to, he opens his eyes a couple of seconds after his legs got a life of their own and started disentangling themselves from the sheets. He straightens his pajamas and hurries up to Louise, tries to look worried even though he hates her right now, sincerely and bitterly, because he knows what she’s about to say.

“What’s the matter, sweetie?” he asks and kneels down in front of her.

Louise looks up at him with a gaze that erases every trace of hatred. Against her, at least. He hates the person who’s done this to them all the more, which makes more sense, really. Louise can’t control this situation any more than he can, but it’s still her fault.

“Mom’s sleeping,” Louise whines, her little face retracted in a sad grimace. “We-we haven’t eaten in so long and I’m hungry, Lawrence, we’re really hungry…”

Lawrence nods hysterically and feels his heart sink. He knew this would happen. She wouldn’t let him have anything that made him happy.

He puts his hands on his little sister’s shoulders, tries to be comforting, he feels a hopelessness that would kill him if he let it in, knocking on his forehead. He’ll deal with it later. Shutting her up is more important. If she keeps crying, Daniel’s going to wake up, and if he does, he’ll also discover how hungry he is.

Lawrence has learned to live with that hunger. They have not.

“Lou,” he says, with kind determination, and rubs her shoulders until she quiets down. Then he grabs mom’s purse, grabbles through it and finds a balled-up fiver at the bottom. “Here’s five bucks, okay? Run down to the store, get some bread or something for you and Daniel. You can do that, right? You know where the store is…”

Louise’s eyes widen under ash-blond bangs. She’s never heard him disown responsibilities before, and neither has he.

“Can’t you do it?” she says, her voice sounds like a creaky hinge. Lawrence has to look away, fuck, her eyes. Little puddles of faithlessness.

“I have to go to school, baby,” he says, and Lou falls apart again, her hands covering her face but can’t hold the cry back.

Lawrence hates when she brings her hands to her face. He’d actually much rather see her tears up front than seeing her hands, how boney they are, knuckles outlined like deformed gravel by her fingers.

Lawrence has seen six year old hands. How they’re supposed to look. In a magazine somewhere. Chubby and clean. Stuffed animals and shit. Like it’s supposed to be at that age. Like it’s supposed to.

Lou’s fingers are thin and knotted like twigs, and constantly grey. Lawrence doesn’t know if there’s something up with the air vents in the apartment, it must be pumping dust right into the living room, because everything’s always covered in dirt. It doesn’t matter how much he cleans, dusting like a hysterical home wife, it’s dirty anyway. He wonders if Lou can feel how it’s crawled in under her skin, the dirt parasitizing off of them. He wonders if he’s making her feel it.

He takes her hands, they almost disappear in his.

“Lou, I’ll go get us breakfast,” he says, tries to soften his voice. “Stay here and keep an eye on Daniel, okay?”

Lou nods humbly, and despite everything, Lawrence gets warm inside seeing her modest little smile. He leans forward and kisses her forehead.

“I’m so proud of you, you know that?” he says an means it. “You haven’t had to eat in almost two days, right? You know how good you are?”

Louise nods again.

“I _am_ good,” she says and giggles tiredly.

“You really are,” Lawrence says, standing up. “I’ll be back in a few minutes, okay?”

He squeezes her hand before he walks towards the door. He really tries not to look at mom’s bed as he walks out.

If he saw the disarray of dirty hair sticking up by the edge of the blanket, he wouldn’t manage to leave them alone with her.

xxxxxx

Adam wakes up from Maria’s soft hand on his arm, and already knows that his day is ruined for no particular reason.

He grunts something, shakes her off and buries his head under the pillow. Maria doesn’t point out how he acts like a five year old. That annoys him even more.

It’s weird that he hates her so much. If he met her in any other context, she’d be his only friend. But he can’t look at her without seeing the stamp in her forehead, _look how much money we’ve got,_ and her clothes that blend into the walls, like Adam’s not supposed to notice her running around cleaning and cooking and shit.

For god’s sake, she’s their _maid._ The woman _lives in his house_ for no other reason than to spoil him.

“Maria, it’s eight o’clock,” he hisses and rolls to his side when she tries to take the pillow away. “It’s _summer.”_

“Adam, school starts today. High school.” She’s not annoyed at all, her voice is smooth and cool like the living room curtains. “You have to get up, you’ll be late.”

Adam moans something incomprehensible, his mood sinking a little further. Black inside out, he gets so mean when he’s mad. Especially at ones who haven’t done anything to deserve it.

He gets up eventually, gets dressed and heads out. Pretends not to notice the looks from the men walking past him, his over-sized, washed-down Sex Pistols shirt, tired black jeans, Doc Martens despite the heat.

Or, that’s not true. He doesn’t ignore a single look, he absorbs every one.

He knows how it’s supposed to be. How _he’s_ supposed to be. The evil little genie living in his chest feeds off of the looks, they fuel it. Adam straightens up, sighs contentedly.

It’s going to be such a nice day. It’s the end of August, that time of year when the beginning of fall makes the sunlight orange and soft, but the winds are still warm from summer.

A man walks past him, Adam reflexively opens one eye, still with his hands in his back pockets and head leaned back. The man swiftly looks ahead, not visibly startled, but he’ll think about this in the office later. That weird, pale boy looking like death but still smiling at the sunlight.

That thought makes Adam smile even wider and the evil genie writhes in his chest, giggling and purring.

He opens his eyes again. It’s one of those days when it’s impossible to stay inside. The mere sight of the sidewalk sends little twitches through his fingertips. His dark heart growing. He needs to get away from here.

Adam starts walking.

Not the same direction The Nice Boys are heading, he just keeps walking. He walks along the sidewalk, lights a cigarette and looks at the world around him through a mist of despise. It’s still better than being home.


	2. Sleeper Cities

The 21st century is still so young. No one’s managed to fuck up it irreversibly yet.

No world wars, no natural disasters. They live in a developed society, America is still the richest country in the world, they’re more or less all equal, they’re not like those fucking middle-eastern nut jobs, nor communist femi-nazi Scandinavia. America is the perfect middle road.

In the 21st century, man has managed to invent iPhones, kill Usama Bin Laden, everyone who’s anything has a Twitter account. And if something bad happens, it’s always Somewhere Else, it’s earthquakes in Haiti, it’s people in Egypt getting killed for wanting democracy. Close enough for us to shed a tear when we hear about the brave young protesters on the news, but far enough for us to pretend we had no idea that Egypt was a dictatorship until the people started rising up against it.

It’s pretty good here. That’s how Lawrence will try to remember it years later: it could’ve been worse. So many people have it worse. They’re a rich country, a democratic country, and in the grand scheme of things, there had to be a good reason he was poor. Them being poor couldn’t be because of politics, or the economy, it had to be something else.

No one stopped people from his neighborhood from moving out of here and work their way up. No one forced them to sleep in the burnt-out cars standing abandoned on the sidewalks. They were there because they were stupid. It had to be that way. He needed to think that.

In the 21st century, the real working class has died out. At least the ones you hear from, the ones still bent over machines and mops and registers don’t have unions, no revolutions coming. Eyes down, going to work and going home. That’s what life is. Dying slowly.

The ones who were upset about the conservatives winning their first election in sixteen years have had kids, and those kids have had kids, and that generation doesn’t know anything else. A gallon of milk is supposed to cost 7.50. One semester of daycare, 500. Lawrence wouldn’t know. He never even bothered to check it up, knows it would just open up that cold pit of inadequacy in his belly.

Lawrence isn’t the least bit bothered by how expensive health care is. He hasn’t been able to afford it for either himself or his siblings, but that’s because he hasn’t worked hard enough. The little heart attack he gets when Lou gets as much as a scrape is a consequence he’ll have to take, the list _infection blood poisoning HIV_ rolling down his mind is all on him.

If she’d get any of those things, she’d die. That’s all his fault. But that’s fine.

Earning his place in the world isn’t a foreign concept for him, and it shouldn’t be for anyone else either.

Lawrence asks for nothing.

He’s part of the sixty percent. The ones who have to suffer for other people to have it good. He’s not even working class, he’s bottom filler. He knows this. It doesn’t have to be a problem. He gets awfully annoyed with himself if any of those thoughts even _almost_ pop up in his head.

During the 21st century, we do our best. You can’t help everyone. That’s why Adam’s only real experience of working class society is when they launch New Chicago.

He was probably thirteen-fourteen when it first came up. The TV was playing in his room, mom had come in to talk and then even the news had seemed more interesting. He didn’t understand everything they said, but the gist of it seemed to be that the they were expanding the outskirts of town.

It was a state project, they’d thought of a name and a slogan to make it catchy. New Chicago. New and _fresh._

It basically came down to adding more apartment buildings to the ghetto parts. More cheap living places, since the lack thereof was getting hard to ignore. They managed to for a long time, though, since most people had a place to stay. There were just a lot of students jumping between short-stay contracts, immigrant families living twelve people in one apartment.

We were changing that. A local politician explained the whole thing. Adam remembers how serious his eyes were when he said it.

“Why are you expanding these neighborhoods especially?” the reporter asked.

“That…” the politician said, you wouldn’t notice the pause unless you paid attention, “is a matter of costs. These parts of Chicago are cheaper to build in, and we see it as a… redefinition of integration. Where we put the money into the effort of getting struggling families and individuals back on their feet, step by step.”

“Adam,” mom had said in a soft voice. “Would you please look at me and not the television?”

Adam tore his gaze from the screen, but gestured feebly with the remote.

“Can’t they just chop up our apartment?” he asked sarcastically.

Mom smiled. But she didn’t seem to hear him.

He just didn’t get it. He was a kid, and a weird little kid at that. You had to prioritize. And at least they’d thought of a solution! It’s not like they executed poor people. You just gave them space where there was any.

The sleeper cities were built on, molded together. Auburn Gresham, Little Village, the Lawndales, one mess of black, sticky well-meaning. They tried to make it nice, they really did, and afterwards, Lawrence will think that it probably would’ve been nice if it weren’t for all the people who started settling down there.

All the fucking morons. All those people with their disgusting poverty, their lack of education, their too many, too stupid, too ugly kids.

The low-income neighborhoods are way too big at this point to be kept as far away from the high-income ones as one might’ve liked. If Adam and Lawrence had known about each other, they could’ve taken a ten minute walk and been outside the other one’s front door. The transition is extreme, the only thing separating them is a thin, thin line of awareness.

Adam knows where he belongs, but he likes to walk through Lawrence’s neighborhoods sometimes. He prefers it there, in the dirt, the misery. Lawrence would love to do the same, moving back and forth between lines, but it is what it is.

The politicians named it Somna.

Here, in the filth, the failure, the sacrificed generation, Lawrence is born.

xxxxxx 

When Lawrence told his mom that he was going to start high school, she reacted in a way that could almost be considered normal, at least considering their circumstances. Widened her eyes, gaped a little so the cigarette almost fell onto the mattress. But it only took a second for her eyes to slit, accusing, almost hateful through the Pal Mal smoke hanging between them.

“High school?”

She spat the words.

“Why would you want that?”

“Because I want to.”

Lawrence was surprised by how little he seemed to care. He’d probably realized by then that his mom would never be proud of him, so caring about what she thought would be a complete waste of time.

She scoffed.

“Ain’t that fucking cute.”

“It’s a little cute, yes.”

She’d turned away. But at this, she looked up, her eyes like dying light bulbs, not even her anger could make them look like live things.

“Lou’s going there eventually, too. And Daniel.”

By then, she was so pissed that she probably wouldn’t be able to talk even if she tried. Lawrence was almost proud, at least this was a genuine emotion, not that awful, unmotivated spite that turned up on certain days. He really didn’t give a shit if she was angry. Being able to think that was wonderful. He clasped his hands in front of himself, locked his eyes somewhere around her knees to underline his indifference.

“None of us are going to be like you.”

Then he’d stood up and walked away.

Lawrence has rights, even though he’s poor. He knows he has the right to a free education. Even with the way things are, he can become almost anything he wants to be, aspire to whatever and attempt at it, as long as he knows that he’ll receive absolutely no help in getting there. That’s fine.

Lawrence doesn’t ask for much, and there’s really no reason he’d start doing so when picking schools. He’s always known his limitations, and it’s not hard to swallow the self-preservation when it’s the only thing left to eat. But whatever school he “should” settle for is a limitation he won’t adjust to. The only thing making it possible for him to stand in this school yard now, so nervous that he can barely breathe, is that he’s also entitled to a student loan.

He’d been able to go to an okay high school for free if he’d been born ten years ago. That’s probably the one thing he’s bitter about, he faces everything else with some kind of jaded hopelessness. High school is expensive as hell now, at least the one he wants to go to. The schools in Somna are without charge, and they’ll keep him a bottom filling until he’s dead. The real education’s in the private schools, which means he has to pay for it, while his mom could’ve gotten in for free when she was his age.

That part still stings, but there’s no point in obsessing. As usual, he’s _adjusted,_ worked extra hours in fluorescent-lit, greasy stores, pleaded at the welfare office, scrimped, saved, cut back on expenses that were cut down to the bone.

Pure stubbornness is what stretched the student loan enough to afford the new clothes he’s wearing. But he’s here. He’s at the school yard. To his school. And it’s not on his level, it’s nowhere near where he lives.

But that’s not why he came here, he knows that, too. The schools in Somna could’ve put a damn scalpel in his hand and let him perform his own surgeries, he still wouldn’t have gone there.

It’s still where he’s from. It’s still _there,_ and Lawrence wants to be somewhere else, anywhere, even if he’s not sure where that is. As long as it’s something else.

Lawrence is at the school yard, surrounded by students that think all this is totally normal. They don’t really want to be here, and they see the school as a school, nothing more. When Lawrence sees the bright-yellow building in front of him he’s filled with endless joy and paralyzing fear, because he sees it as an airplane.

xxxxxx

Adam sees her a few feet away from the front gates. She got here before him, they didn’t go together. She asked him this morning if he wanted to carpool, but he didn’t even answer, it felt important to preserve the sound between them. You can’t call it silence, she prattles on like teenage girls do, but it might as well be. It contains nothing.

Claire’s chirpy voice, talking-talking-talking about whatever comes to her mind, so eager to maintain some kind of contact.

And Adam’s face, dead and cold, her light little voice bounces off his head, doesn’t even touch him.

He doesn’t get how she puts up with it. He’s never given her a reason to keep trying. He doesn’t want to talk to her, doesn’t want to be her brother. If she weren’t his sister he’d love her like she was. But since he _is,_ and there’s a connection between them whether he likes it or not, it just makes him feel some odd kind of melancholy.

She’s done nothing to deserve the way he treats her. She can’t change, and he’d never ask her to.

Claire Faulkner is standing by the gates of her school. She’s gorgeous as always, the sunlight sets her hair on fire, straight, dark waterfall down her shoulders. Adam Faulkner is a few feet away, watching her. She doesn’t see him.

He could walk up to her. Tell her they’ll catch up. Wish her good luck, it’s her first day, he knows she’s nervous.

Be a big brother.

But it doesn’t work that way. Claire has no problem being his sister, so if she saw him, she’d do all those things so he wouldn’t have to. But she doesn’t, and Adam’s completely incapable of loving her, so he walks past her, into a building that he hates but is still better than standing there and watching such an obvious proof of his failures.

xxxxxx

Lawrence tries to will his hands to stop shaking as he walks up the stairs. It doesn’t really work. He’d probably claw scrapes into his palms if he hadn’t sanded his fingernails yesterday.

Yeah, “sanded” is the right word. There are no nail clippers at their apartment. Lawrence could’ve ignored it, there are a lot worse things that can go wrong today, but around bed time, when he was preparing his books and bag and reality crept in, it felt like his nails grew into long, yellow witch nails and he’d have to drag his hands into class the next day, like an ape. He went out and found a good cobble, sat down on the sidewalk and started scraping his fingertips against it until they bled and burned, but his nails were short.

The other Lawrence would never go to school with too long nails. This is one step closer to being him, just like Lawrence gets closer to him with every step he takes into the school. Maybe that’s why it’s getting hard to lift his feet.

He hopes he’ll meet someone as nervous as he is, but everyone at this school seems so disgustingly normal. Girls walk around in packs, giggling and bickering, guys greeting each other, happy but politely distant, because they’re Nice Boys. The right amount of Nice, not like dorky, but can still keep a pleasant conversation with their friends’ parents.

Lawrence feels his one hand grip his bag harder, the pubertal voices bouncing between the walls are drilling into his brain.

They’re so far above him.

He wants to vomit. Probably would’ve, if he’d had a decent breakfast. Everyone here is so _adjusted._ Lawrence needs someone who’s as terrified as he is, someone understanding how this can be everything he wanted in the meantime as he wants to kill himself now that he’s here.

“They can’t be that scary, man. And your pretty shirt would get dirty if you passed out.”

Lawrence’s vision widens when he realizes he’s being spoken to. He can’t respond until he’s sorted out his blood flow, but when he does, he turns to the guy who suddenly, for some reason, is standing next to him. He responds to Lawrence’s look with a completely joyless grin, and then resumes to staring at the students in front of them.

He’s small, Lawrence’s first thought is that he must be on his way to the junior section, but he quickly realizes he can’t be that much younger than himself. Sure, he’s the height of a thirteen year old and as skinny as Lawrence is. But there’s something about his features, the anger of an eighteen year old and something beneath, something deeper, and Lawrence would love to feel superior to him, but he can’t.

He can, however, feel pissed. Someone actually pointing out that he looks terrified ruins everything. It’s like this little fucker has walked up to him and yanked the hands out of his pockets, carefully studying his scraped, swollen fingertips.

“I’m sorry?”

Lawrence’s voice sounds more shrill than he would’ve liked, since he’s not used to talking back to people his own age, but the boy doesn’t seem to notice. He takes a step closer to Lawrence, keeps watching the students with a despise so great Lawrence swears he can feel it radiating from his body.

“You’re looking at them like they’re monsters. Trust me, if anyone has any reason to be nervous here, it’s not you. I’m the one who’s gonna get in trouble, and I couldn’t be more bored if I’d visited your dad at his lawyer firm, because I assume that’s how he paid for those _fabulous_ clothes you’re wearing?”

Lawrence’s heart is about to bust with all the things he’s feeling right now, his fingertips throbbing against the shoulder strap of his bag. Despite this, he’s needs to be calm enough to smile at his teachers in a few minutes.

And in front of him is a boy that he’ll never talk to again, looking at him like he already has a comeback for anything he could say.

“Maybe this is news to you,” he says and turns to the young man next to him, “but yeah, clothes actually _cost_ if you’re not happy to blow… Tokio Hotel for permission to raid their closet.”

The other smiles bitterly and turns to him, seemingly unfazed by the fact that Lawrence is at least ten inches taller.

“Wow, don’t you have a mouth on ya.”

He somehow manages to sound sugar sweet and venomous at the same time.

“Just so you know,” the boy says, voice even softer, but so much sharper, “no one listens to Tokio Hotel anymore, you should’ve said Black Veil Brides. And for future reference, using blow bribes as an insult sort of loses effect when we both know that’s how you got into this school.”

Lawrence isn’t a violent person. Not because he doesn’t want to be, but because he likes to believe that as a doctor, you need to be able to keep your emotions inside, because honestly, what situation can be more stressful than standing in an OR with someone else’s blood on your hands? And what kind of doctor would he be if he broke down into a sobbing mess then?

He’s never started a fight in his life. And what this kid said isn’t even that bad, he’s heard worse insults from his own mom, dirtier stuff said to Wendy by people who don’t even know her. He should be able to restrain himself. But he isn’t.

He leaps forward, feels a scrawnier body collapse under his weight and hunch back when Lawrence’s fists hit him, not even aiming, just hitting, hitting, hitting, wordless and pointless and just to feel something other than fear. The other doesn’t even react at first, he doesn’t start punching back until he hits the ground, but when he does, it’s with more force than what should be able to fit into such a small person. The hands that looked tiny when they were by his sides hits Lawrence in the face, once in the ear making it ring tonelessly, on the mouth until he feels blood filling out the wrinkles in the skin on his lips.

They manage to get pretty far into it. By the time two teachers get there and manage to pull them apart from a tangle of waving arms and kicks, Lawrence doesn’t even feel any specific place in which his face hurts, and the other is panting, hissing like a raging animal, the sleeve of his t-shirt is ripped at the seam.

Lawrence doesn’t take his eyes off him when the teachers grab their arms and yells something about calls to parents. He doesn’t care that the other boy looks like he wants to rip his throat out with his teeth. Lawrence will never be able to back down from a fight with him.


	3. The Good One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's throwing up in this chapter. (And in future chapters. I know no one's reading this, but figured you'd be warned.)

“Get off,” Adam hisses when the teacher – there’s only one of them now, two pulled them apart but one got sick of trying to hold Adam still – tries to grab his shoulder again. That’s the third time he’s managed to break free, and once they reach the teacher’s lounge, the remaining teacher’s also given up and lets Adam walk on his own. Lawrence hasn’t even tried to shrug off the meaty hand on his shoulder since he was hauled off the ground, because he barely notices being restrained.

He’s busy cursing himself. Trying to block out the icy, sour ball in his stomach.

He’s such an idiot. He’s such a no-good dumb fucking idiot that he wishes a school shooting would take place this second and he’d be one of those unfortunate victims who gets a picture leaned against the wall in a corridor so people can put flowers below it, because seriously, how the _fuck_ could he be so stupid that he ruined the opportunity he’s worked his whole life for because some goddamn little Somniac set him off?

Lawrence glances at the boy on the other side of the teacher as they wait by the door. His gaze is set solid and pissed off at something in front of him, back straight, shoulders slim but tense under the washed-down t-shirt. He looks like he’s expecting a punch.

Eventually, another teacher opens the door, takes a look at the boys in front of her and asks what the problem is. The teacher answers that they need to find the contact information and talk to their councilors. Answered with a nod, the door swings fully open and Lawrence is pushed into the lounge. They just sort of stand there as the first teacher runs to check what grade they’re starting.

He’s never put much thought into how a teacher’s lounge should look, but Lawrence has known from the start that this is one of those places that he _should_ like, but in reality just makes him nervous. He sort of figured it’d be full of giant, fluffy couches, dimmed lights and wall after wall of book cases, but here, there are only waiting room chairs and desks. Some of the teachers sitting by them look up at Lawrence and the other.

Lawrence can’t even look at them, he glares into the floor and feels a blush forming under his bruises. But the asshole he came in with just grins, that joyless smile he wore right before they jumped each other. Oh, Lawrence hates him.

The teacher sticks his head out of a door in the corner of the room, waves a folder at them and tells them to come. Lawrence almost runs up to him, won’t show anything but cooperation from now on, but the little fucker follows him at his own pace. Practically dances out of the room. _Oooh, look at me, I’m so free and quirky._

Lawrence thought they’d get sent to the principal’s office, like in the movies. But no one seems to have a real office here. They follow the teacher into a giant room split into cubicles, where people are hunched over their computers. Lawrence tries to walk with a light step, since concentration seems to be important in here, but as a student, his mere presence seems to disrupt the office silence as brutally as if he’d been banging a couple of those instruments that look like pot lids against each other. He’s almost relieved when the teacher leads him into a cubicle where someone, obviously their councilor, is waiting.

Lawrence’s mentor is the size of a mountain, there’s no better way to put it. He’s not necessarily menacing, just extremely _intense_ with dark, bug-glistening eyes, but the folder the other teacher hands him is the size of his hands, and he looks so compact that Lawrence is certain that you could jam two fingers up his nostrils and it’d be a total block.

There’s only one chair in the cubicle. The other boy sits down right away. Lawrence doesn’t care. He couldn’t sit still now even if he wanted to.

“Hello,” their councilor says, voice resonating like one long bass tone. “What’s happened with you guys?”

“There was a little rumble. This young man,” the teacher says and points to the boy in the chair, very cautious about not touching him, “is of the Faulkners, so we figured…”

“The fuck does that matter?” the other hisses, his gaze even harder when he looks up at the teacher.

“Adam,” their councilor says, and his baritone is scary enough to shut up even Adam, as he’s apparently called, though he still looks grumpy. “Language. Barry, would you get a chair for… Lawrence.”

It’s not a question. The other teacher leaves, the silence is unbearable for a couple of seconds until she comes back, places a chair behind Lawrence, he sits down in lack of something better to do.

He needs this. He can’t mess it up.

When their councilor looks down and starts looking through the files, Lawrence realizes that his and his entire family’s future depends on this conversation. That makes the ball in his stomach twist, it’s like a living thing.

Then it’s complete silence. It seems like a really long time. Maybe their councilor just wants to torture them for as long as he can, Adam is so fuming that Lawrence swears he can _feel_ the negativity to his right, and as for himself, he doesn’t know when’s the time to start making excuses.

Eventually, the councilor clears his throat, takes a pen from the little jar on his desk and opens their files again, without looking at them.

“My name’s Mr. Peters,” he says. “And yours?”

“Lawrence Gordon,” Lawrence mumbles.

Peters nods and looks to Adam. His eyes glisten disapprovingly below bushy eyebrows, and are met with a gaze twice as disapproving.

“And you?” Peter asks patiently.

Lawrence doesn’t get how Adam can even pretend to be unfazed. Peter was scary even before his voice got a warning undertone. Maybe to Adam, it’s enough to fool himself.

“You know my name,” Adam says and folds his arms.

“Indeed,” Peters says. “And why is that?”

Adam rolls his eyes.

“Because I was supposed to start last year, showed up first day and all, but then my parents remembered that this wasn’t the best idea.”

“That’s right,” Peters says. “Why is that?”

“My Barbie doll sister doesn’t start until now, and if she’s not here to keep tracks on me I’ll plant a bomb in one of the toilets,” Adam says, standing up. “So I should be _ashamed_ of myself for fucking up Golden Boy’s hairdo on the very first day, I get it. Can I go now?”

He doesn’t wait for an answer. Peters doesn’t even look surprised, but then again, he’s obviously met Adam before, and even Lawrence, who doesn’t know him at all, gets that he’d never stay here.

“I’ll be in touch with your folks, Adam,” he still says, calmly, aimed at Adam’s back.

“I’m dreading it,” Adam says, and Lawrence actually sees a hint of a smile as he disappears around the corner.

There’s something up with his vocabulary. Lawrence has never heard anyone talk like that. If he’d use the word ‘dreading’ at home, and he assumes that Adam comes from a similar neighborhood, people wouldn’t get what he was saying.

Peters looks after Adam for a moment, his head bobbing over the walls of the cubicles as he walks out. There’s a cold kind of disappointment in his eyes that only grownups can bring out, before he looks at Lawrence again. Lawrence thought this would be the definite end to everything in his world, the apocalypse awaits, might as well get it over with, but Peter just _studies_ him, it feels like those black eyes look straight through him. Past his nice clothes, right down to the aching ball in his belly. Maybe that’s why he settles for saying:

“Lawrence?”

“Yes?”

“You’re not going to do this again?”

“No, no, of course not, I would never…”

Peters waves his hand dismissively.

“You can go. I’ll call your mom.”

Lawrence feels how his relief doesn’t really overcome that thing in his stomach. Instead of staying put it starts moving up, dangerously close to his larynx.

“Sir,” he says carefully,” lifts his hand but quickly lowers it when he remembers what his fingertips look like. “That file, is it…”

“It has your contact info, your legal guardian’s number, address and a bunch of other stuff you probably don’t want me to know,” Peters says, completely ruthless and without even looking up. Either he doesn’t care, or he just gets that the biggest favor he can do Lawrence right now is to pretend this conversation never happened. But it doesn’t feel like the latter. Lawrence has to swallow several times. He can’t throw up, for god’s sake. He hasn’t even eaten today.

Peters seems to read his mind. He looks up, and once again sees everything, but Lawrence guesses that his fear isn’t that hard to discover at this point.

“I won’t tell anyone, for Christ sake. And for what it’s worth, you’re not the only Somniac kid in this school, let me tell you.”

Lawrence nods and gets up. If he runs out, it’ll be too obvious, so he just walks as quickly as he can, out, through the lounge, sees the restrooms further down the hallway, and by a fraction he gets there before his guts are wringed out like dish towels, trying to find something to throw up as Lawrence is bent over the toilet, just stomach acid, it burns in the cut on his lip.

He can stand there and hate himself for maybe thirty seconds before it starts feeling stupid.

He has to do this. It’s for them.

Lawrence leans against the toilet seat with both hands, white-knuckled, and he decides to hate Adam from now on.

He swallows a mouthful of ill-tasting saliva and sits down on the dirt-grey floor. Hates him so intently, through his entire soul. If not for making him miss his first class, then for making Peters open up that file and see the secret behind Lawrence’s ambition, Lou’s pleading eyes looking back from the papers.

xxxxxx

Claire comes home a couple of hours after him. That’s probably because she stayed for the entire day and Adam went straight home after leaving the teacher’s lounge and thusly was only in school for about an hour, but he still makes an internal snide remark about how _very_ busy and important she is, with all these four hour coffee sessions with her _girls_ and chirping about nail polish.

Whore.

“Hello, brother,” Claire says as she enters the kitchen where Adam sits with his feet on the opposite chair. “How was the first day?”

Adam turns page in the paper. Europe is being weird again.

“They sent me home.”

Claire takes the tea kettle from the stove and holds it under the tap. She doesn’t seem surprised at all, and it annoys him.

“Was it that fight?”

Adam glances at her.

“You saw that?”

“No,” Claire says and takes the box of tea bags out of the cabinet without looking at him. “I would’ve helped you out if I had, dummy. Sonya told me.”

Adam nods, annoyed, and closes the paper.

“Sure you had.”

She doesn’t appear to notice the bitterness in his tone. She never does.

“Yeah, she asked me if I’d tell mom and dad,” Claire goes on as the hiss of the burner slowly fills the kitchen.

She jumps up to sit on the counter and puts the tea bag in her cup. She giggles to herself and looks up at him, almost shyly, even though she can say whatever she wants, to whoever.

“They don’t seem to get that you’ll tell them yourself, huh?”

Adam looks at her. Claire Faulkner is sitting on the countertop. Nice girls don’t do that. She does it anyway, and she’s nicer than anyone.

She’s wearing a t-shirt that says ‘Little Miss Chatterbox,’ it’s tight across her chest, and there’s one of those things that looks like Ms. Packman on her stomach. Her jeans are low-riding, and she insists on keeping her calendar in her back pocket, even though it keeps slipping out when she sits down.

She’s not perfect. But she’s one of those people who can do whatever.

She’s holding a tea cup with her name on it, white, sort of wriggly letters on blue china. Adam has one with his own name. They both got one when they were born.

As some constant reminder that they belong together. Always standing next to each other, compared. She’s perfect, always perfect, and she’ll be no matter what. He’ll never even be passable.

Adam stands up, leaves the paper on the table, and shoots Claire a venomous glance which she responds with a completely indifferent one. That is also perfect.

“Why the fuck would they _get_ me?” Adam hisses as he passes her, through the kitchen door and the hall to his room.

He doesn’t see Maria on the way, for which he’s very grateful.

xxxxxx

Lawrence’s first love was Barefoot Girl.

He remembers it so clearly. He doesn’t remember a first time he saw her or anything, she was just one of many malnourished kids where he lived. She wasn’t even the first one he’d seen without any shoes. But she was the first one he’d seen that could be so beautiful even though she was so dirty, worn down like a coin that used to be shiny, and he’d loved her as intently as only a nine year-old can love.

It’s been six years, but she still doesn’t have shoes, so technically she should still be Barefoot Girl. But she’s his best friend now instead of someone he blushes and runs away from when he sees her, so he calls her Wendy. It makes more sense.

Right now, Lawrence and Wendy are sitting on a wreck of a car in the parking lot outside the convenience store. It’s been here for as long as Lawrence can remember, and he hates it a little, this further proof of the failures that are so many in Somna, but it’s nice to have somewhere to drink warm beer in the orange evening sun. Even though he knows Lou and Daniel are at home sleeping, he keeps feeling like he’s forgotten something he’s supposed to have with him.

“Oh,” Wendy says after a minute of silence and turns to him. Her big eyes look like they’re on fire when the sunlight reflects in them. “I forgot. How was school?”

Lawrence blushes feebly and looks away.

He shouldn’t be this ashamed. The rest of his classes went great. He even dared to raise his hand at one point, despite the scrapes on his fingertips. And more importantly, Adam wasn’t there. But he wants to tell her about a perfect day.

Lawrence takes a sip of his beer and mutters into the can:

“I got in a fight.”

Wendy turns to him again, her eyes so wide that they look too big for her slim face.

“You got in a fight?”

Lawrence shrugs, even though his confidence shrinks down further when he notices how disappointed she gets.

“I was nervous, okay?” he says impatiently, even though he’s not angry with her. “And some fucking little emo kid went up and said something about my dad buying my nice clothes, and I just… I got pissed.”

Wendy flickers her gaze over his lifted t-shirt and the gaping holes in his jeans.

“Those clothes?”

“No. Other ones, I showed you. Like… Acne and whatever.”

“Acne?”

“Yeah, whatever they’re called. Just fucking expensive clothes.”

“As in pimples?”

Lawrence laughs, even though he feels peculiarly helpless.

“You sound more mad about that than the fight.”

Wendy laughs too, her eyes sparkling tiredly.

“So what happened?” she asks and leans her beer can against her belly, it’s perked on the rim of her jeans. “Did anyone see you?”

“Mm,” Lawrence says, nodding. “They talked to my councilor, or like… the guy that sort of… takes care of the students. And the guy I fought with… Adam, he just took off after the councilor said something about him being held back a year so he’d start the same year as his little sister. Real mature. But I stuck around, and he, the councilor, he… looked through my files, and said he’d call mom.”

Wendy nods, lowers her gaze and fiddles with her can.

“But he didn’t get to her?” she asks. “Or… shit, does she even have a phone?”

“I really don’t know,” Lawrence says and takes the last swig of his beer. “I think so, but she’s been asleep since I got home.”

Pause.

“But I think he gets it,” he then says, trying to sound like he doesn’t care, but probably wouldn’t have fooled someone who _didn’t_ know him. “I mean, if he saw my address, and that she’s unemployed… he has to get what’s wrong. He has to get why I’m there.”

Wendy nods. The light that was in her eyes, the one that only Lawrence seems able to bring out, has already died.

“I hope he didn’t,” she says sincerely and turns to him again.

Lawrence nods. The words _me, too_ hangs between them, he doesn’t have to say them, so they’re quiet for a bit.

“That… Adam,” Wendy then says. “He thought you were, like, rich?”

“Yeah.”

For some reason, he just wants to cry.

Then they’re quiet again. Watch the sun drown in the oily smoke from the factory in the distance, such heavy pollution that it barely rises above the rooftops. The air is dry and hot, you can taste the dirt. They’re sitting on the food of an old car, leaning against the cracked windshield.

Somna.

“It must’ve taken forever to save up for those clothes,” Wendy says quietly.

She leans her head against Lawrence’s shoulder and they’re quiet until the sun is gone.


	4. Old Habits

Lawrence wakes up with determination. It feels a tad bit more like that fantasy he had of a perfect day. Sunlight seeps in through dirt-yellow blinders, waking him up, and he actually slept well last night. No Daniel crying, no mom sneaking out and tripping over his shoes in the hall.

He gets a perfect first day two days too late. That’s a lot more than what he hoped for.

Lawrence swings his legs over the edge of the bed and gets up. The apartment is quiet. No one throwing things yet, no one coming to meet his mom. When he manages to drag himself out to the kitchen he sees that Lou is up, sitting cross-legged in front of Daniel’s crib.

She’s playing with the only toy she owns, a small plastic pony. She just brought it home one day, so Lawrence is pretty sure she nicked it from somewhere, but he hasn’t asked, doesn’t really care. He supposes that she, just like he does, feels they owe it to her.

“Hi, baby,” he says and crouches down next to her.

She looks up, smile wide.

“Hi, Lawrence,” she whispers. “Are you going to school?”

“Yup,” Lawrence says and gives her a quick kiss on the top of her head before he gets up. “But we should have some sort of breakfast first, shouldn’t we?”

Lou nods and follows him to the kitchenette. Lawrence kneels down again, opens the small fridge and looks around. Yoghurt cups, apples, half-full pack of waffles. At least they won’t starve.

“Larry?”

Lawrence doesn’t look around when she addresses him. Her hair looks like a blond crow’s nest and he doesn’t want to see it and realize that Lou’s hair looks exactly like it.

“Morning,” he says neutrally and takes two yoghurt cups from the fridge. “Do we have any clean spoons?”

Lou hurriedly takes two dirty spoons from the sink and starts rinsing them off, and Lawrence gets sad in that way again as he takes the plastic from the cups.

Mom stumbles out of bed with a moan and wraps the sheet around herself. Lawrence takes a yoghurt cup and hands it to Lou.

“How was school?” mom asks hoarsely and walks up to him.

“Fine,” Lawrence says and starts eating his breakfast in such a rush that he gets yoghurt on his chin. “There are waffles in the fridge. Make sure Daniel gets some.”

“Sure.”

One morning without hating each other, invitation to breakfast. That’s as close to love as they’ll ever get.

xxxxxx

Lawrence feels genuinely good today. That doesn’t happen often. It feels like the whole process of making his dreams come try has been postponed two days, but that’s okay, because now he can really get to it.

He had a bad start. It doesn’t have to be a problem. The way he sees it, there’s a simple solution, and that’s to be the best possible student anyone could ever imagine during the rest of the semester.

“Good morning, Paris Hilton,” Adam says gleefully when Lawrence walks up to him – yes, he does it willingly, but he regrets it the second Adam opens his mouth – and grabs his jacket. “Did you get a spanking for the pretty clothes you ruined?”

“Adam,” Lawrence mumbles. “Can we talk?”

“You want to _talk_ to me?” Adam says, that sugary sweet tone again, and adjusts his worn backpack. “I’m honored. But not really in the mood.”

“Adam,” Lawrence repeats, tries to keep from yelling, and sternly leads them away from the cloud of cologne and puberty heading into the school. Adam follows, only feigning reluctance.

“You know, I have an idea,” Lawrence says when they’re at a safe distance from the people he wants to impress. “Can’t we… for the rest of the semester, can’t we just try to avoid each other? For the sake of both of us?”

Adam smiles. It doesn’t affect his features in the slightest.

“Why?”

“I’m not gonna get held back my first year,” Lawrence says, finally finding the nerve or rage to look him in the eye. “I’m not spending any more classes locked up in Mr. Peters’ office with you. Seriously, can’t you just…”

“For god’s sake,” Adam moans and rolls his eyes. “Is _that_ what you’re worried about? Honey, you _may_ have to work your baby-soft little hands if World War fucking Three breaks out, but if you just want to be a doctor or a lawyer or whatever the _fuck_ it is you want to be, you only have to keep sucking CEO cock until you get there.”

Lawrence was prepared that he’d say something like this. You don’t really have to know Adam to see that he won’t do anything that someone asks him to do, even if it means avoiding someone he doesn’t like. Lawrence should’ve known it wouldn’t be that simple.

When Adam says this, he can’t think rationally. Or of his sacred pledge to be the perfect student, or of Lou and her dirty fingers. Adam is saying he’ll never have to work, when that’s all he’s ever done in life.

Because of this, Lawrence misses his first class today, too. Not because they fight all that long, but because they sit a long time in Mr. Peters’ office, Lawrence trying to maintain eye contact with him even though the beetle eyes still scare the hell out of him. His left eye is throbbing dully, and he’s pretty sure he’s bleeding from the side of his head, where Adam’s tugged on his hair.

It feels like all Peters does is stare at them for several minutes, before he tells them that he’ll make sure other teachers put them at different sides of the classroom if that’s what it takes, and as if he’s just been waiting for an opportunity to interrupt, Adam gets up, muttering curses during the entire walk out of the room.

xxxxxx

Adam is on his bed, touching his swollen nose and wondering how a rich boy can swing that hard, when there’s a knock on his door. His mom opens, without waiting for an answer. The knock is therefore pretty pointless.

“Hi, honey.”

“Hey.”

She walks up to the bedside, sits down. It seems like she’s trying to think of a way to approach him, and maybe that’s to be considered thoughtful, but to Adam it feels more like she’s the cop trying to calm down the psycho with a twitchy finger on the trigger.

The evil genie cackles.

“Mr. Peters called me today.”

“Big surprise.”

Mom nods. Adam glances at her, smiles slightly, and notices that everyone in their family looks pretty much the same. Except for dad, at least. Soft, dark hair, pale skin, light eyes always aimed at something other than the person they’re talking to. He manages to get pretty annoyed at that before she speaks up again.

“Adam,” she says, her voice sort of aches in a weird way. “Do you have to do this?”

Adam looks at the ceiling. The place on his leg where she’s placed her hand feels tainted and slimy.

“He was being a bitch.”

“I get that,” mom says, louder. “Can’t you act bigger than that? You act like a kid, you can’t handle getting picked on…”

“How would you like me to be, then?” Adam spits out and looks at her again. “Like Claire? Or like you?”

“I just don’t want you to be like _this,”_ mom hisses. That’s how long that lasted, the calm and pedagogic thing. “You think you’ll get anywhere in life when you… dress like that and isn’t even allowed in school before your little sister?”

She usually at least sees his standpoint when they fight. And when they’re not fighting, she at least tries to understand his feelings, even if she doesn’t always succeed at it. She doesn’t get him, but at least she doesn’t hate him, like dad does.

And sometimes she’s just so fucking dumb. It’s like a shell over Adam’s heart that gets a little bit thicker, just with those words. _This_ said with infinite spite.

“I sure as shit won’t get to where you are, so I’m good,” he finally says. He can feel his eyes darkening, good, _good,_ then they’ll look less like hers.

The evil genie is screeching with delight.

Mom stares at him in silence, probably every bit as mad as he is, but she has no idea how one shows that, so eventually, she looks away, and Adam grins ruefully.

He won.

“Sophie and Jean are coming over for dinner,” she says, referring to her sisters. “Should I ask Maria to bring you some food in here?”

“You don’t want me to sit down with them and talk about what I’ve been up to?” Adam says.

Mom pretends not to hear him. Adam scoffs wearily and starts fidgeting with his nose again.

“I’ll get my own food,” he says, and mom nods and gets up. Adam watches the door close behind her.

He should get angrier that she’s so ashamed of him that she doesn’t even want him in the same room as her sisters. Just like she should probably get angrier that he hasn’t had one rumble-free day of school yet, but none of what they discussed is news to them. They’ve had this conversation a thousand times, and just like now, it started nothing and ended nothing. Nothing was resolved.

Adam steps into the dining room about an hour later, when his aunts are already there, Sophie with too much hair spray and Jean with purple lipstick. Claire gets to join them, because it’s a girl’s night. Dad’s not there, so they’re talking and giggling all loud and shrill as women do when there are no men around, that state when they stop being women and start being _girls._

“We’ve been _loading_ Claire’s college fund,” mom says as Adam takes silverware from the drawer. “We’ve known the principal for some time, so we’re hoping to… tip the scale in her direction.”

That laugh. _Hehehehe._ Not from Claire, though.

“Mom,” she says, correcting. “My grades would get me to whatever college.”

_Hehehe._

Mom laughs too loud. Her face is shiny from the wine.

“My little toots,” she says, pinching Claire’s cheek. “You hear that? Like she’s going to get her hands dirty.”

 _Hehehehe._ Adam wants to throw the milk carton at her head.

He walks to the cupboard and gets a plate. Jean doesn’t notice him until he goes to the dining table for the food.

“Hello, Adam,” she says. “I didn’t know you were home.”

“No, I know,” Adam says, smiling politely as he takes a pork chop from the pan. “Mom locks me in my room when she has people over. I only get out for my ration of water and crackers.”

No one seems to have heard him. Except for Claire, she smiles into her milk.

“What’s it like finally starting high school?” Sophie asks and taps her scary finger nails against her palm. “Is it weird being older than the other kids in your grade?”

Adam shrugs.

“Oh, definitely. I feel older than everyone in that school, to be honest. Including the teachers. But I’m glad mom lets me out to go there, even if it costs me the water for that week.”

Mom is weirdly focused on her food. Sophie’s face is frozen in what might be her version of a smile. But Claire puts her drink down, throws her head back and laughs out loud, so shamelessly that even mom tears her gaze off the plate and looks at her accusingly. Not saying anything. She doesn’t need to.

In the middle of a nerve-tearing silence, Claire seems to be the only one who’s still alive. She looks from her aunts, to mom, who’s smiling in a way that seems painful, and back again.

She seems honestly confused by the sudden uncomfortable mood, but eventually, she looks at mom and rolls her eyes.

“What?” she says impatiently. “It was funny, even you got to admit that.”

She’s still giggling when Adam exists the kitchen, smiling cruelly, along with his evil genie.

He won again.


	5. I'm the Bomb, You're the Fuse

Lawrence’s first love was Barefoot Girl. He doesn’t remember where he got that name from, it’s possible that he heard it in a song or something. She’ll always be Barefoot Girl to him, now more than ever, because during the weeks that follow, he’d love not having to be a grownup. He’d give anything to be nine again and lift gum from the convenience store with her.

It’s the first time he’s wanted to regress since he got that letter on granted student loans. That makes him hate Adam even more.

For some reason, every time Lawrence sits down with Wendy and spews out all the aggressions he’s kept down during the day, he’s convinced he’ll somehow be collected enough tomorrow. He spends hours on the hood of their car in the parking lot, sometimes with Daniel nodding off in his lap, sometimes with Lou in the front seat, behind the wind shield they’re leaning against, and Lawrence just talks and talks and Wendy listens and nods. And he walks away feeling so much lighter.

But then he goes to school.

He tries to stay away from Adam, he really does. But it doesn’t seem to matter. Lawrence’s temper is like a tank of gasoline, dirty and insignificant and harmless on its own. He’s ignored it for so long that he’s forgotten it’s there, and it takes nothing but a little spark for it to explode into half-molten shards of metal.

The worst part is that Adam seems to get that he’s the spark. He seems to _like_ it, the little asshole. Why else would he keep doing those little things that he somehow knows pisses Lawrence off?

Like rolling his eyes when Lawrence raises his hand in class. Like smiling that way when Lawrence sees him and can’t ignore it, loses track, starts stuttering, quiets down.

That’s how it starts. Something stupid that’s really nothing compared to all the reasons he has _not_ to care about Adam, like Lou and mom and the entire goddamn future. Maybe that’s it; all those things are the gasoline, those things that have been there for so long that he doesn’t mind it anymore, and Adam’s that tiny spark, means nothing, but still ruins everything.

Because it’s always ruined. If Adam gets Lawrence to lose track in front of a teacher, Lawrence will inevitably grab him by the elbow at the end of the class, Adam will go with him without much protest. Lawrence will probably throw the first punch, Adam hits back, and they keep going until someone sees them and drags them off to Peters where they’ll sit wallowing in shame under the black beetle gaze.

At some point, Lawrence tries to explain this turn of events to Wendy in a way that makes sense. She just shakes her head, she’s never done that at him before. Lawrence gets annoyed even though he absolutely agrees with her.

“I’m sorry, I don’t get it,” she says, propping her elbows against her knees. “If you hadn’t been able to… control yourself, you would’ve taken the kids and gotten as far away from your mom as you could get by now. What is it about this guy that makes you…”

She can’t think of a proper word for it. Lawrence scoffs.

“I don’t know. Why didn’t you finish grade school?”

Wendy laughs, her eyes lighting up. The sunlight coming in from the side, on her legs and her neck, skin that would’ve been pale if it weren’t for the thin, grey sheen of street dust on it. It’s almost hard to bare how beautiful she is.

“I don’t fucking know!” she says, more amused than bothered. “But we’re talking about you now.”

Lawrence looks at her. Then up at the oily sky.

“I really try not being like him,” he says eventually.

She gets it. It’s nice.

“You’re nothing like him,” Wendy says. “But… I know you. I know you’re the best. The teachers won’t know that if you keep acting like a spaz.”

Lawrence nods, annoyed. He knows she’s right. It doesn’t matter.

“Whatever.”

“Lawrence,” Wendy says patiently. “Seriously. You don’t want to be this way. _I_ don’t want you to be this way. Get a grip.”

Lawrence sighs, tries to keep some kind of trusty eye contact when he nods again. He wishes he didn’t have this many people in his life that could make him feel bad.

It’d be so much easier if he could just leave it all without looking back.

xxxxxxxxx

“Does Backstreet Boys know you’ve stolen their haircuts?” Adam asks when he passes Lawrence the next morning.

“You’re hilarious,” Lawrence says, cautious about putting as much despise in those words as possible, but it doesn’t seem to take effect. Adam just keeps walking, straightening the backpack so there’s a rattle from the little pins with anarchistic messages.

Lawrence feels the fire dangerously close to the gasoline, but pushes it away. If he can’t keep calm when this little fucker pushes him he’ll never become a doctor, and if he can’t be that he might as well lay down and die.

He gets through the day, at least. Or, he puts so much energy into not exploding that he doesn’t learn that much. But who cares. He’s here, it’s a step in the right direction.

And yeah, Adam does everything to keep him from that, but it’s nothing Lawrence can’t handle. It’s surprisingly easy to develop tunnel vision when he looks at his teachers. It’s cool. He’s cool.

There’s one time when he’s not, drags Adam into the restrooms, they wrestle for a bit, goes back outside. Adam gets a bloody nose, and rams Lawrence’s head into a sink so he gets a bump that throbs and burns and everything spins, but that’s fine, Lawrence can wipe away blood, cover it with his bangs and walks outside, goes on.

It doesn’t matter, because the gasoline doesn’t explode. It boils a bit, burns inside, he feels it in the lining of his stomach. When Lawrence finally walks out the gates of the school to go home to safety, it’s with a feeling that he’s overcome something huge, like there’s nothing he can’t do if he can handle a day like this.

That’s why it feels so unfair when he hears Adam’s voice behind him.

“You going home, sweetie?”

Lawrence keeps walking. He wants to kill someone. No. It’s fine. He’s cool.

“What, you’re not even gonna talk to me?”

Adam hurries up to him. For god’s sake…

“Fuck off.”

“Well, lookie who just found his nuts!” Adam says. “Come on, you can’t just ignore me, I get worried. Have I busted so many of your suits that you have to start paying for them yourself?”

Lawrence has to look at him. That smirk, that two-dollar hair cut. The worn Ramones shirt.

So obviously not caring.

“You know what,” Lawrence says and the gasoline boiling, burning, “I don’t know what your deal is with me, but honestly, I don’t give a shit. And you can’t care so much about me that you really have to fuck up _me specifically,_ so why don’t you go screw someone else’s education?”

Adam’s smile fades a little as he’s talking, but he seems perfectly calm, despite this minor dip in Lawrence’s entertainment value. He knows as well as Lawrence that there’s nothing he doesn’t have an answer to.

“I don’t know, Larry,” he says, tilting his head. “I think it sort of bugs me that you make it sound like I’m fucking up your entire future by pushing your small shiny buttons, even though there’s not a principal in the country that wouldn’t take you in if you just batted your lashes and waved daddy’s business card. But who knows, maybe this place has better lunch.”

Then he starts walking. Lawrence’s fingers twitch, the gasoline boils and explodes, a giant ball of fire that kills everyone around him, but it’s still totally pointless since no one will ever care about it. His explosions don’t mean shit. People wouldn’t care about a goddamn nuclear holocaust if it happened because of someone like him.

In another one of those cute fits that poor people get sometimes, he grabs a handful of gravel from the ground and throws it at Adam, it says _clink_ against the pins on his backpack and hits Adam’s head making him turn around. Good. _Good._

Lawrence won’t be overseen. He got to this school so he wouldn’t have to be ignored. He won’t let _Adam_ of all people take that away from him.

“I don’t even _have_ a fucking dad!” Lawrence explodes as Adam turns around. “I barely got a fucking _mom,_ okay? Some asshole fucked her and she discovered it too late to get an abortion, and she don’t even know who the fuck it was, it can be anyone in our goddamn apartment building! Today is the first time she got out of bed for three fucking days! She doesn’t even get up to smoke anymore, I can only hope she hasn’t dropped a cigarette in bed and burned the place down even though it’d be so _fucking… good if she died!_ Why did you even think I was rich, was it the clothes? I bought them for my motherfucking student loan when I should’ve spent it on food… because I got nothing, okay? _I don’t have any-fucking-thing!”_

He wants to end it with some smoldering warrior gaze, or at least a snappy finishing statement, but it doesn’t really work. He notices that Adam doesn’t have a smart comeback right away, at least that’s nice, but Lawrence just catches a glimpse of his face before he has to look down. Hopes he doesn’t see them. Tears, fucking tears, won’t let them out. Not for _Adam._

Lawrence won’t cry. He has good reasons to, but he never does. He has others to take care of. Their tears are always more important.

Not having thought about it for fifteen years, how can Adam, in a matter of seconds, make him realize how much he hates it?

Lawrence thought Adam would say something about what an _outstanding_ performance that was. A slow, sarcastic clap wouldn’t have been unexpected. But there’s nothing. When he dares to look up, he sees Adam’s face more or less expressionless, or maybe it just seems that way because Lawrence has never seen him serious before. After a few motionless seconds, Adam slowly walks up to him, hands in pockets.

“How’s your head?” he finally asks.

Lawrence stares at him stupidly. The tears calm down, they didn’t manage to fall.

“What?”

“Your head,” Adam says, the spark is back but less cruel now, and nods at Lawrence’s forehead. “It’s bleeding again. If you want to stay cute, maybe don’t get PMS when you have open wounds on your face.”

Lawrence lifts his hand to the point on his forehead that’s still throbbing and aching. When he lowers it again, it’s sticky, and he sees red in the corner of his eye. His blood must’ve been pounding at a rate that his bangs couldn’t hold back.

“Come on,” Adam says and jerks his head at the sidewalk outside the school yard. “Come back to my place, I’ll get you a band-aid or whatever.”

Lawrence nods, without much thought to it. He shouldn’t go with Adam, but it’s such a long way back to his place. And he’s so tired.

“Okay.”

Adam nods curtly, doesn’t seem to get sentimental about something as trivial as… whatever it is they’re doing now. They stand there for a second in awkward silence until Adam starts walking. It takes Lawrence a moment to realize he’s supposed to go with him, so he takes big leaps to catch up, then they keep walking. Like it’s not a big deal.

He walks along the street with Adam. He says nothing, and neither does Adam.

Still trying to get used to the idea of someone else tending to his open wounds.


	6. Masks

When Adam was younger, he used to think that his family wasn’t his real family.

Fine, they all looked like him, they had the same last name and he called his mom “mom” for some reason, but they couldn’t be his family. No way.

He had vague memories of what a real family was. They weren’t clear imagery, more like an old DVD you’d played too many times, with jags on the record. But whoever these people were, they weren’t his family.

Adam’s older now, but he’s never fully let go of the idea. At least he gets some kind of comfort knowing that either he’ll get out of here on his own, or his real family will come to get him.

Since he’s not bringing Lawrence to his real home or his real family he shouldn’t be this nervous. And even if he were, it’s not like Lawrence’s opinions matter to him. It’s definitely too late for that, since the nicest thing Adam’s done for him thus far is offering to bandage the wound he got when Adam rammed his head into a sink.

Adam doesn’t really get why it feels like he’s swallowed a giant eel when the transition is made and they’re suddenly on a clean sidewalk and there are flower pots outside the front doors.

Lawrence doesn’t seem to mind the flowers, or how Adam and his Ramones shirt is a black spot against the houses behind them. He probably thinks they’re just taking a shortcut to the streets where Adam really lives, where child hookers dig through trashcans and you can’t leave your house without, intentionally or not, buying crack.

Adam feels a soft stab in his chest. Right around that point where he’s supposed to be empty by now.

He’d rather bring Lawrence to a home like that. But it is what it is, so he has to walk up to the house that, despite what he tries to pretend, _is_ his home, open the door and pretend he doesn’t notice Lawrence stopping on the front steps and looking around like he just woke up.

Adam turns around impatiently as he takes his jacket off.

“You coming?”

Lawrence tears his gaze from the golden frame of the hall mirror.

“You don’t… _live_ here, right?” Lawrence asks, and Adam wants to punch him even more than he already did.

It’s like his otherness is reflected even clearer than usual through Lawrence’s eyes. They don’t talk about it in the family, it just is. There are The Faulkners That Succeed in Life and there’s him, locked in his room. He’s almost used to it and then Lawrence comes along. Standing outside and looking at Adam like there’s nothing in this house that goes together with what he is.

“I know you don’t think much of me,” Adam says with venomous calm, “but I don’t break and enter. Especially not to get a fucking band-aid for you of all people. Would you come in?”

Lawrence stays put for another second. Then he finally goes inside, looks like he’s not sure where he’s allowed to step, almost stumbles as he follows Adam to the kitchen because there’s so much he wants to look at.

Adam is grateful for a reason to turn away from him as they walk down the hall.

Lawrence shouldn’t have given that little speech. It was much better before, when Adam had zero sympathy for him. Lawrence was everything he hated. At least the way he saw it, and that was enough.

Luckily, any emotion beyond a distant tolerance goes away when Adam hears Lawrence’s steps behind him. Adam can almost _feel_ his eyes jumping across the walls, the paintings and the carpets and the door frames, even _they’ve_ been poofed up to perfection. And how he admires it, _why_ does he do that? They all scream the same thing, and Lawrence if anyone should despise it. _Look how rich we are!_

 _You want to live here?_ Adam thinks hatefully as they enter the kitchen. _You want to come home to my parents and my sister and my fucking_ maid? _It’s fine, I promise, just take my place. They won’t see the difference._

Adam looks around the kitchen. He just has to find the goddamn first aid kit. Then Lawrence can leave, and this annoying section of his life will be over.

Lawrence’s gaze follows Adam around the kitchen, like he still can’t believe how he can move so casually around here, how he can move between these walls as if they were home. Because of course Adam can’t live here. Not the roughed up little punk kid cutting classes and binge drinking and getting The Good Boys in trouble.

Anyone can see that.

“Seriously,” Lawrence says as Adam, in lack of a better view, climbs up on the counter top and rummages on top of the fridge. “You live here?”

Adam sighs, hanging his head.

“Yes, Lawrence, I live here,” he says politely. “You don’t happen to see a first aid kit somewhere?”

He wishes Lawrence would answer quickly. He hears footsteps in the hall.

“Adam, have you…” Claire says a few seconds later as she walks in, and Adam crouches down and starts frenetically searching through the bread box so he won’t have to see her stupid eyes widen as she sees Lawrence. “Oh… hi.”

“Hi,” Lawrence says, actually sounding nervous.

“Claire, Lawrence, Lawrence, Claire,” Adam says and takes a few steps on top of the counter to get an overview. “Claire, where’s the first aid kit?”

“I have no idea,” Claire says. “Ask Maria. What are you doing up there?”

“I’m looking for the fucking first aid kit.”

He still refuses to meet her eyes. He hates her, hates the way Lawrence looks at her. He can tell that she’s better than Adam. He could tell right away.

Adam climbs down from the counter, feeling Lawrence’s eyes lapping up Claire as clearly as if it were his own body being so thoroughly taken in. He gets to the bathroom and finally founds the kit on a plastic container on the wall. He takes it, goes back into the kitchen to get Lawrence even though the guilt he felt over that wound on his forehead is steadily declining.

They’re talking. Adam doesn’t catch what about. That’s how he feels most of the time, listening to people like them. Like they’re talking a language he _sort of_ knows, but not really.

“Lawrence?” he cuts through, politely. “Would you like to go to my room, or you want to get straight to business and fuck my sister right away?”

Lawrence blushes and lowers his gaze. Claire rolls her eyes before hiding her face behind the open fridge door.

He doesn’t even like Lawrence. But no fucking way Claire’s going to get him. That feels important for some reason.

They pass Maria on the way to Adam’s room, she looks as surprised as Claire was that Adam has brought someone home that’s not a hammered girl with smeared makeup and a crop top. She looks so happy for him that he doesn’t even feel like he wants to ruin it.

“Hello, Adam,” she says, as _sincerely_ happy as she always is when she thinks he has friends.

She turns to Lawrence. Adam sighs theatrically. It doesn’t seem to take effect.

“Hi, dear,” she says, extending her hand. “I’m Maria.”

Lawrence glances at Adam, probably a silent question about what she’s doing in this house, but still smiles at Maria, so _polite,_ oh, Adam wants to smack it out of his face.

“Hi,” he says. “Lawrence.”

“Lawrence,” Maria repeats. “Let me know if you need anything.”

“Thanks.”

Adam starts walking before Maria’s quiet footsteps start moving away.

He wishes he’d never brought Lawrence here. He wishes they could stay enemies.

He likes himself more getting into fights every day than when he has to face what he really is.

Adam opens the door to his room, steps inside and fights his natural instinct to slam it shut. He hears gentle footsteps follow him inside, turns around and sees Lawrence’s eyes wander the room.

Adam’s room. He hates that, too. He wants to chop the legs off the giant bed just to have something to hit Lawrence in the face with. Instead he tears the first aid kit open and points to his bed.

“Sit.”

Lawrence immediately obeys. Adam takes out a cotton ball and alcohol, his fingers are stiff and jittery as he unscrews the cap. Lawrence stares at his hands, in lack of something else, seems to put a lot of thought into what to say next.

“Is your family rich?”

It almost sounds innocent. But Adam still tips the rubbing alcohol over the cotton ball way too hard, it drips over his fingers, stingy scent rising to his nose. God, he’d give anything for a whiskey right now.

Adam walks up to Lawrence, kneels in front of him and lifts the cotton to his forehead. Lawrence cringes, grits his teeth, then he feels better.

Unfortunately, Lawrence isn’t satisfied. Maybe because Adam didn’t answer him.

“Or are you like… is it a foster family?”

Adam sighs loudly, to make his annoyance apparent.

“No,” he says curtly, and Lawrence nods.

“So that girl we met outside…”

“My family’s maid, not mine,” Adam says, and his bitterness is so total that Lawrence feels it in his touch. “I don’t use her for anything. But don’t worry, she’s compliant, I’m sure she’ll get in on a threesome with you and Claire if you ask her nicely.”

He feels Lawrence’s gaze on him darken, but Adam doesn’t care. He really doesn’t care. Not even the evil genie enjoys this; he can’t even hear it when it’s buried in the gray ash of pointless frustration.

“The fuck is your problem?” Lawrence hisses. “You think you got it bad? God’s sake, you’re a fucking little brat who don’t get along with his maid! You got money, roof above your head and an education you didn’t even have to pay your goddamn self for! You know how much _I’d…”_

He silences abruptly, like someone’s slammed a door on him. He was so close to saying it.

_You know how much I’d give to be you?_

Adam doesn’t. Lawrence sees in his eyes how wrong he is, how Adam has every reason to hate his family, but he doesn’t care. He wants to piss Adam off, wants him to say something equally cruel back so Lawrence can storm out, go back to his tiny, tiny, filthy apartment and forget about this.

Adam just stares at Lawrence, maintaining eye contact for the first time since they got here, and his eyes are black crystal, completely ruthless.

“You want this?” he says, calmer than Lawrence has ever heard him, but every syllable razor sharp, like little shards of stone, throws the cotton ball aside. “Take it all. Do it. Wear my clothes, play Billy Talent real fucking loud every night and I _swear,_ they won’t know the difference. It’ll make it a little harder to fuck Claire, but by now, there’s nothing so bad that I won’t do it, they won’t be surprised at all.”

Adam gets up. The raging pain in his eyes is related to something completely different from watching his siblings starve, but it’s just as sincere as Lawrence’s, and it’s definitely something deeper than not liking his maid.

“I don’t get what’s the deal with your mom,” Adam says, throwing his arm out at nothing. “She’s unemployed or mental or whatever? Who fucking cares! She’d notice if you went away, wouldn’t she? And when you get home now, she won’t hide you away in your room because you’re such a fucking disappointment that it’s best if she doesn’t have to see you at all?”

His formerly pale face is bright red, hands trembling by his sides. He needs the evil genie now, it’s at times like these it’s supposed to wake up and make him forget about the fact that he just wants to punch something and then cry. But it’s left him, it’s just Adam, and his open, bleeding wounds, nothing to numb them.

He thought it’d get better. For years, he was convinced that his real family would come along and take him away from this, wash his forehead from the Faulkner stamp that tied him here so long after it became clear that this wasn’t where he belonged.

That family never came. All Adam gets is a teenage guy sitting on his bed with bloody bangs over the cut in his forehead, looking pissed off and lost.

Lawrence doesn’t answer. Looks down. Adam smiles bitterly and walks up to his speakers.

“You’re such a fucking cunt, you know that?” he says, almost calm again, and pretends to check if his phone is hooked up.

Lawrence still doesn’t reply. Adam feels his genie returning. Thank god.

“Fuck off, Lawrence. I don’t wanna fucking looking at you.”

The words sound like they’re written on a tombstone.

Adam hears the door closing seconds after. He’s glad, of course. Glad and destructive.

Maybe a little lonely.

Adam presses play, turns it up higher and higher until the music shuts out his brain and he doesn’t have to think, Johnny Rotten screams into his ear, he doesn’t need anyone else.

_Don’t know what I want but_

_I know how to get it_

_I wanna destroy the passer by cus I_

_I wanna be anarchy_

_no dog’s body..._


	7. The Fifth Stage

When Adam complains too much about his life, his mom usually says, and her voice always gets a little sharper, that he sure doesn’t know how she grew up.

Adam knows. He knows exactly.

He knows where she lived. What she had to do to get by. He knows all of it.

But he doesn’t care. He keeps complaining, and not just because that’s what he does. It’s for the exact same reason he just threw Lawrence out.

He knows other people got it worse. But he’d rather live on the street. He’d rather live in a dumpster. He’d rather be Jewish and live in Germany during fucking World War II.

Anything. Everything is better than this.

xxxxxxxxx

Rage boiling, fingers twitching, it’s like a monster taking over his body but not fitting, pressing up against his skin, about to explode.

Lawrence gets angry like this more often as he grows. When that happens, he represses it. There are too many people he has to take care of, he can’t come home like this.

That’s Adam’s fault, too. Everything’s Adam’s fault. He’s furious, that’s Adam’s fault. If he goes home now, either mom or Lou’s pleading eyes are going to pay for it, and that’s Adam’s fault, too.

_You’re such a fucking little cunt._

Lawrence walks faster and hopes to release some adrenaline that way before he gets home.

Fucking Adam. Fucking Adam with his fucking riches. Fucking Adam not even getting how lucky he is. Happiness is a genetic lottery, Adam’s a sperm that came out of the right balls, coincidence alone has gotten him that giant house that he mopes around in, and he doesn’t even get how lucky he is.

Lawrence tries to work his way out of this complete bottom gunk. By the time he started filing for loans last year, Adam had already gotten into too many fights to stay in school.

Lawrence has never hated anyone like this.

That plan about speeding up in order to calm down didn’t work all that well. He gets home about twice as fast as he would’ve, but just as pissed off. He takes a deep breath before opening the door. It shouldn’t be a problem, he’s repressed bigger frustrations than this.

The apartment is dead. The only thing meeting him is a cloud of stuffy warmth, so thick and fetid that he feels it sticking to his skin. That usually means that mom hasn’t woken up all day, either to open a window or get them some food.

It’s one of her bad days. Sometimes it’s okay, sometimes she gets up at a decent hour, sometimes she even goes outside while it’s still bright.

Lawrence enters the living room, looks around. The air is sour with cigarette smoke and ingrain dirt. An empty milk carton on the floor, the dust swirling lazily in the lone ray of sunlight from the window. Everything’s dusty, everything is always dusty, the dust will still be on him after he’s moved out. It’s under his skin.

Lawrence immediately stops being angry. All he feels is a cold hand around his guts. That complete hopelessness that he almost wishes would finally overpower him.

He walks up to Daniel’s crib. He’s in it, of course, but Lawrence’s heart retracts in sudden ache when he sees Lou next to him, her bony arms around his neck. Like he’s her teddy bear.

The anger towards Adam almost grows. Mostly because it isn’t until now he realizes how much he’d give to care as little as he does.

Lawrence reaches into the crib.

“Lou,” he says softly. “Lou, wake up.”

She doesn’t react at first. Then her one eye opens to a blue slit, before she whines something unintelligible and burrows her face into Daniel’s cheek. Lawrence smiles, even though he can barely stand. Everything so hard.

“It’s okay. Go back to sleep. I just wanted you to know I’m home.”

“Alright,” she mumbles and closes her eyes again.

Lawrence leans his elbows against the fence of the crib.

“Did you guys get anything to eat today?”

Lou yawns. Daniel rolls over in sleep and reaches out, finds her upper arm. His hand is as thin as hers.

“No, mom was tired,” Lou slurs and pulls Daniel closer. “But someone came to see her before, so we went out, and we found a hot dog, and I split it, and Daniel got the big half…”

She says all this in one single breath. Lawrence feels something warm and burning rising in his throat.

“That’s sweet of you, baby,” he says. “But I’ll let you go back to sleep.”

She doesn’t wait for his permission, she’s asleep again before Lawrence manages to stroke her cheek and straighten up. Is still Nice Big Brother somehow.

He turns around. Her bed is in the other corner of the room. One hand over the edge of the mattress. Lawrence can’t make out if whoever came to see her earlier is still next to her, but they rarely are.

He doesn’t hold her accountable for this, not outward, at least. Lawrence just takes a breath, clenches and unclenches his fists a few times until he’s put himself back together.

That’s what he does, that’s what he’s always done. He doesn’t take it out on her, he walks past her bed, back outside, and that cold hand, as always, gives an extra squeeze at the idea of leaving the kids alone with her.

She’s not a bad person. Lawrence wants to think that she’s just sick, but then there’s the other side of him that just thinks how hard can it be, _how fucking hard can it be,_ and what sickness would do this to someone, what would get her so stupid and so lazy and so fucking horny besides herself, the person she is? And then there’s the tiny, tiny part of him whispering that maybe it’s them, the kids, they’re the one costing money and take up room, and Lawrence is the one who hates her, who could’ve done more, who was born and since then just sits by her bedside gaping and squeaking like one of those stupid baby birds that don’t even have real feathers yet.

Lawrence opens the door and walks in to the stairway, pretends that the air doesn’t taste better out here, that he wouldn’t spare himself so much suffering if he just closed the door behind him and never opened it again.

xxxxxxx

It takes him a while to find Adam’s house again. They all look the same in this part of town. Shiny brass numbers above the doors. Fallen flower petals dancing across balconies. And everyone passing Lawrence looking at him that way.

For a split second, Lawrence actually understands why Adam is so angry. The boredom must be devastating after a while. But then he remembers that all the houses look the same where he lives, too, but in a different way. The same dusty copper roofs. Same green corners in the bathrooms.

Maria opens the door, almost immediately after he knocks. Lawrence smiles politely and asks if Adam is in. As she walks him to his room, he tries to talk to her like he’d talk to Victoria, because he needs someone in this house that’s at least almost on his level.

He doesn’t knock before opening the door to Adam’s room, slams it shut behind him. Adam startles, he’s on his bed with his feet on the pillow and head by the foot, _oh, so quirky, so weird!_ Some singer’s ragged voice presses against the window panes, and Lawrence strides over to the speakers, turning them off. Turns to Adam, the wound on his head throbs like a second heartbeat.

“Give me money.”

Adam doesn’t seem to have kept up with the turn of events. He opens his mouth slowly, his eyes glazed and unfocused.

“I’m sorry?” he says eventually.

Lawrence pretends not to hear the sarcasm.

“Give me some money. You don’t want them, and I do. I need them, even. Really bad. Give me some.”

Adam sighs, raises his eyebrows slowly. Then he shrugs.

“Okay.”

Lawrence exhales.

“Good. Thanks.”

Adam gets up and walks over to a small, plain jar, standing on a shelf by the window. Lawrence hears a crisp rustling, and is ashamed when he realizes that he has to hold himself back from running up to Adam and snatch the jar out of his hands.

“You know this won’t do anything?” Adam asks before turning around.

He didn’t choose a good time to say that. When Lawrence sees the bills Adam’s holding, they look like the key to salvation, and when Adam sees that, he sighs again.

“Lawrence,” he says, and Lawrence forces himself to meet his eyes. “You get that?”

Lawrence scoffs and looks at his shoes.

His worn, leaking, two-sizes-too-small shoes.

“You bought that?” he says, looking up. “Seriously. That’s socialist bullshit, the whole ‘money doesn’t buy happiness.’ I get that your parents have ulcers and shitty marriages and doing their secretaries and whatever, but they can eat. And I heard good things about that.”

Adam holds out the bills, but when Lawrence reaches out, he yanks them away, locking his gaze.

“Lawrence, this is 200 bucks,” he says. “It’s a week’s worth of food for your family. It won’t get your mom to stand up and get a job.”

Lawrence steps closer to him. It’s hard for him to seem scary when there’s money at stake.

“Right now, food sounds fine,” barely more than a whisper. “So would you please give me the money?”

Adam holds out the money again, and Lawrence grabs them. He even thinks he might detect a smile before he turns around and leaves.

Adam sits back down, and smiles sincerely as he realizes that he’s both done something his parents wouldn’t like, and bought his way out of getting a nosebleed tomorrow. Sometimes he gets it right.


	8. Sworn Enemies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dudes, I'm so sorry about the delay. I've had some computer issues, and the one I have now is a piece of shit, but at least it can post chapters! (Kind of) 
> 
> Luckily, no one is reading this, so there shouldn't be a problem. :D With that said, look at this thing that I wrote!

Adam was right. One week is all they get, and even then, Lawrence scrimps back like mad, mostly out of habit. But it’s worth it. He gets to give Lou an ice cream. That happens just about never. Maybe on birthdays.

And Daniel being awake for a while today to play with her. He sleeps too much…

“Doesn’t it bother you?” Wendy asks one night when they’re out walking and Lou’s fallen asleep with her head on his shoulder.

Lawrence shakes his head, only kind of hesitating, since he already knows what she’s talking about.

“Not really.” Then he adds, smiling: “I never had that _honor_ you think I do. It’s all in your head.”

Wendy laughs. Lawrence looks at her legs, the frayed edges of her jeans. She only has one pair, and a few years ago they had to accept the fact that they were about four sizes too small, so she and Lawrence located a bookstore, pleaded until the cashier lent them a pair of scissors, and then cut the legs off. They’re shorts now, and despite the lifted knee socks, her legs get damn near blue in the winter.

“If I were you, for example, I’d turn tricks,” he mumbles, but regrets it immediately when he feels Lou’s slim arms around his neck.

Wendy keeps smiling.

“Yeah, I don’t believe you. You could be out mugging people right now.”

She stops by a bench and sits down, and Lawrence turns around to look at the road sidewalk them.

They’ve been walking for almost an hour and a half, and realizing that, Lawrence immediately gets that cold feeling of _fuck he’s alone with her how could I,_ and it passes through him like a stab. But then he sees Wendy, her dirty hair and the white marks on her nails, and gets even more worried, but in another way.

“You cut way back to get into that school,” she goes on. “I think your morals are all you have left.”

“Eh,” Lawrence says, stroking Lou’s hair. “I got them, and you. Who needs consistent food intake?”

Wendy smiles bleakly.

“More mouths to feed.”

“I like those, in case you couldn’t tell,” Lawrence says, and Wendy’s laughter is so big it shouldn’t fit into their tiny lives.

“I have.”

She looks at Lou, sleeping in his arms.

“Can I hold her?” she asks.

Lawrence hands her over. Lou doesn’t even stir. She doesn’t sleep often, so when she does, it’s impenetrable and deep, she doesn’t wake up until the hunger gets too great.

Wendy carries her all the way home, and tries to talk about Other Things, like how she wonders where her own mom is, or ask him about school, since she can tell that Lawrence is thinking about those things again, and she wants him to get away from them even more than he does.

xxxxxxxxx

When Lawrence enters school the next day, he’s cold inside in a different way than he usually is.

The two weeks Adam predicted are up. As of today’s breakfast, he has ten bucks left. In Lawrence’s world, that means the judgment day has come and the trumpets sound and he’s in every conceivable way _fucked,_ because he can’t do it anymore, he can’t do school and money and the rest, not when he’s actually tasted life without it, but he won’t ask Adam for more money. Not a chance in hell.

He’s completely abandoned his pride, it’s not about that. With Adam, it’s something else.

Lawrence starts walking up the stairs. He sees Adam from a distance, his leather jacket is like a worn blotch in the blur of sleek gray and adequately short skirts, and slows down. Unfortunately Adam seems to have eyes in the back of his head, or it’s just easy to notice when someone tries really hard not to stare at you, because he stops in the middle of the stairs and turns around. Lawrence stops too, thusly ruining any chance to pretend that he was just heading to class, and then, can’t even move at all, just stand there and feel the blush creeping up his neck.

Adam just looks at him first, with his usual, vindictive indifference. Then he walks down the stairs, until he’s just one step above him, and almost as tall. The weird contrast between rising noise around them and their complete silence.

“Hey,” Adam says, finally.

Lawrence nods, hopefully looking casual.

“Hi.”

Adam’s gaze pins him to the step, seemingly waiting for something, before he sighs and take a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket.

“I’ll go out for a smoke,” he says, with no effort at all to be discreet. “I guess you’ll take that George Michael haircut and head to class. But let’s meet up at lunch and chat?”

Lawrence opens his mouth to reply, but quickly realizes he has no idea what to say. He doesn’t get what Adam would want to talk about.

Or, that’s not true. He knows.

Adam’s given him money, and being the way he is, of course he needs something in return. Lawrence knew it somehow, but didn’t want to believe it. Too much has been happening. Always something happening.

xxxxxxxxx

Lawrence walks out to the schoolyard by the next break, and by then, he hasn’t seen Adam in a while. Adam’s always been the mystic phantom of the classes, leaving when he feels like it and getting back with a cloud of smoke on his trail, the teacher leaves a dry remark about his absence and Adam smiles ruefully.

Adam’s not smoking now. He’s sitting on a bench by the edge of the schoolyard, one foot on the edge of a trashcan in front of him. He looks so confident in the meantime as he doesn’t seem comfortable in his own skin, always that posture as if he’s expecting a blow, and Lawrence realizes a few seconds too late that he’s staring at the t-shirt hanging loosely around his chest.

How can he be so goddamn skinny? If any of them is able to eat until he’s _not_ sickly thin, it’s him.

Lawrence sits down next to him. Adam keeps looking at the sky. He barely seems to notice that Lawrence is there, and Lawrence doesn’t feel the need to remind him, so they sit quiet for a while.

“What was it that you wanted to talk about?” he says eventually.

It sounds more annoyed than he meant it to be. Adam doesn’t seem to mind. He turns his face from the sun and looks at Lawrence through the corner of his eye.

“It’s been a while since you got that money,” he says softly.

‘Money.’ He just throws the word out there, it means nothing to him.

“Yeah,” Lawrence says. “What about it?”

Adam shrugs.

“Don’t you want any more? Like I said, I don’t think your mom turned into Martha Stewart because you got two hundred bucks.”

Lawrence doesn’t know who that is. He sighs.

“Adam,” he says, trying to get used to how that name sounds without being shouted. “I really appreciate it. All of it. You giving me that… but it’d feel totally off.”

Adam raises his brows.

“Not because we’re sworn enemies,” Lawrence continues, and Adam grins, “but because… it’s not like I can afford to owe you anything.”

Adam eyes him over, like he’s trying to determine if there’s any idea to talk him out of this, and finally nods.

“That makes sense,” he says. “Or… it doesn’t make a lot of sense that it’s more important to not owe me shit than to feed that little sister you keep whining about, but… I guess I respect it.”

Lawrence scoffs, but with less annoyance than usual.

“Feeding her is the most important thing. But if we’re going to ever get even, I won’t be able to do that for a while.”

Adam snorts, shakes his head.

“Lawrence, we both know you don’t owe me a fucking thing,” he says, looking at him like that again, making it impossible to look away. “I won’t ask you for anything. And if you hadn’t gotten that you wouldn’t have asked me for shit in the first place.”

Lawrence tries to think of a cool comeback, but gives up without much effort. What Adam says is true. And admitting that is for some reason not as hard as he thought it would be.

“But let me know if you need anything else,” Adam says and stands up.

Lawrence nods, even though Adam’s already turned away. He opens his mouth again before he’s figured out why he’s doing it.

“Adam.” Adam turns around. “I mean, the whole sworn enemies thing…” Lawrence feels his face heating, admitting this is horrible. “We don’t have to… I mean…”

Adam smiles reluctantly, blushes a bit, too. Lawrence didn’t think him capable.

“Let’s not push it,” he mumbles and turns around again.

Lawrence smiles, too. That’s probably the closest Adam will ever get to letting his guard down, but it doesn’t feel inadequate in any way. He feels better now than he has in a long time.

xxxxxxxxx

Adam gets home a few minutes later, and he feels restless and frustrated. More than usual, anyway. And it doesn’t help that he hears Claire rummaging through the fridge.

He doesn’t want to be friends with Lawrence. He doesn’t want to _want_ to be friends with Lawrence, because that his biggest downside is that he’s a good person. That’s more or less the only thing wrong with him, but it feels like enough reason for Adam to hate him unconditionally.

Adam doesn’t like nice people. Nice people get inside his heart and roots down there.

He steps into the kitchen the second that Claire closes the refrigerator door. She wears her hair up today, shorter strands of hair falling loose from the bun. She’s wearing a tight, orange shirt and black jeans. Not everyone can combine black and orange, but she can. Some people can.

“Hello, brother,” Claire says cheerfully and puts a plate covered with saran wrap on the counter.

“Hey,” Adam mumbles. “We got any coffee?”

“I think Maria made some earlier,” Claire says. “You can heat it up. You want some of these pancakes? There’s a ton.”

“No,” Adam says, takes the coffee pot from the stove and empties it in the sink. “I’m good.”

He can make his own fucking coffee. The mere implication that he couldn’t annoys him.

They don’t talk for a while. Claire heats up some pancakes in the microwave and hops up on the counter with the plate next to her. Adam waits for the coffee.

“By the way,” Claire says. “I saw you talking to that Lawrence dude today. You guys finally getting along?”

Adam stares intently at the coffee pot.

Claire gets to ask stuff like that. Claire can do whatever she wants.

Everyone else lets her do that. Mom and dad, stuff that’d buy him a whole evening of cold stares is just cute little quirks when she does it. She can do whatever she wants, but not with him.

“No, not really,” Adam says without lifting his gaze from the coffee. “So if you gave in to your wild little teenage dreams and blew him, there wouldn’t be any awkward situations where he’d have choose between the two of us. I think you should go for it.”

Claire gives him a look. She very rarely loses her temper, which is why it’s almost scary when she does. Her eyes get dark and voice sharp, and Adam feels like he’s finally proven that there’s something beneath all the sugary sweet that’s just as rotten and useless as he is.

“Dad gets home from his business trip soon,” she says.

It’s not an insult, but it’s the absolute worst thing she could say. It’s only in her absolute darkest times she actually uses how far above him she is.

 


	9. Something Else Entirely

Lawrence doesn’t keep up with politics. It doesn’t interest him much. He doesn’t have enough tie-ins with the outside world to know much more than what’s on the front of the news stands he passes on his way to the subway, and it’s mostly internal bickering amongst the parties and anti-fascist movements beating down those poor racists in suits.

It doesn’t matter anyway. He won’t blame anyone else. He really doesn’t. He hates it when people do. Just because you’re born with certain prospects doesn’t it mean you have to adjust to them.

That’s why it’s so hard when those idiot thoughts worm their way into his brain. That part of his mind that’s only supposed to criticize _him_ sometimes turns against him and blames other people. Politicians, class society. Things that he, no matter how superhuman he tries to be, can’t control.

It’s hard to name a specific turn of events. He knows that most schools are private now, even though he never got why that was a big deal. Just how it upset a bunch of other people, even the tiny part of Somna that was involved in politics. They sat outside the closed McDonald’s and talked with nostalgia about when education was for everyone. When anyone could work their way up.

Read between the lines: _when there was hope even for us._ Lawrence hates them.

Anyone can still work their way up, as long as you work hard enough. Even he can. As long as he doesn’t kill himself first.

The first time he realized something was seriously wrong was when he heard the saying “more money in the taxpayer wallets.” Said with a big Serious Face by a liberal candidate, when the first presidential debate aired live in the window of a TV store he happened to pass.

Lower taxes means more money in their wallets. The problem is that Lawrence, in the age of sixteen and having worked for almost half of that time, has never been able to afford a wallet.

xxxxxxxxx

One day, Lawrence comes home while his mom is awake.

Her eyes are drooping and fogged, filthy hair. So tussled it looks like a bun on top of her head.

She’s so disgusting. Lawrence wishes that wouldn’t be his first thought upon seeing his mom.

“Hi,” he says, closing the front door.

It’s poorly hinged since someone threw her into it, now there’s a big gap between the frame and the door. He has no idea what to do with that once the winter comes.

“Hey,” she says.

Yellow fingertips rubbing her temples, she squints at the light shining through the blinders. But her voice is slightly less gravelly than usual.

“How… how was school?” she asks and opens an eye to look at him, circled with smeared makeup. “You were in school, right?”

Lawrence shrugs.

“It was fine.”

“You got any friends there, Larry?”

Lawrence ruffles his hair in distress.

“Not really. You know what, I’m gonna go out and see if I can get us some dinner.”

“You don’t have to,” mom says, almost panicky, like she thinks he’s about the bolt out the door, which isn’t too distant. “I bought us some food today. I left Lou and Daniel with Wendy to go to the store. In the fridge, look.”

She sounds so eager, like a little kid. Lawrence opens the fridge as she takes a cigarette. When he takes the box of pancake mix and looks at her, she smiles over her lighter.

“Can you make ‘em?” she asks shyly. “I’m kind of tired.”

“Sure,” Lawrence says and puts the box on top of the fridge. “I’ll go get the kids.”

She nods. Lawrence nods, too, opens the crooked door and goes outside.

It’s so stupid. He should he glad she was awake at all today. Jesus, she’s been conscious long enough to get that her children need food.

It’s just that these days, the good days, make the bad ones even worse.

If she’d been in bed all day every day, that would’ve been reality. It would’ve been all he knew, Lou and Daniel’s reality. He doesn’t know how he’s supposed to explain the pancakes the next time they go to bed without dinner.

Wendy looks relieved when she sees him. She’s sitting on a power box with Daniel in her lap. He’s wriggling to get down to Lou, stomping on a soda can on the ground.

“Don’t you have a mom, Wendy?” she asks when Lawrence is within earshot.

Wendy smiles, a glimpse of discolored teeth.

“I do, actually,” she says absentmindedly and holds Daniel tighter, trying to keep him still.

Lou doesn’t look up when Lawrence stands beside her. She keeps stepping on the can, flattening it, and Lawrence takes the opportunity to hug Wendy, squeezing Daniel between them.

“I’ve never seen you with her,” Lou says, looking up at them. “Don’t you like each other?”

Wendy smiles again and strokes Daniel’s hair before handing him over to Lawrence. Lawrence smiles, too, even though the few memories of Wendy’s mom almost hurt him more than the actuality of their own mom at home. It’s always worse when it’s about someone he loves.

“Lou, I’ve met her mom,” he says and puts Daniel down. “She’s almost worse than the fucking whore we’re stuck with. Trust me.”

Wendy laughs, in that impossibly happy way, and Lou squints at them. She doesn’t seem to accept Lawrence’s way to end the discussion.

“What’s a whore?” she asks, the exact moment a man in a disgusting expensive suit passes them. Just the fact that he’s in this neighborhood voluntarily _screams_ “client,” and upon hearing a six year-old saying those things, he stops, staring at Lou, then at Lawrence, then Wendy, hoping at least one of them will scowl her. When none of them do, he keeps walking, glancing over his shoulder a few times, and Wendy giggles as Lou keeps looking confused.

Some things can’t be taken seriously. Mainly the most serious things of all.

xxxxxxxxx

Adam’s dad does get home.

There’s a teary reunion in the hall. Mom smiles so wide that you can see all the whitened teeth and lets him stick his tongue far down her throat. Claire falsetto shrieks and hugs him until he laughs, pretends to choke and bends her arms from his neck with a big sigh of relief.

Which is fucking hilarious, of course. Claire almost passes out from laughing so hard.

Adam is further back in the hall. He usually tries to at least say hi to his father when he gets home from a trip. That way, he won’t get it thrown in his face the next time they fight that he’s not even trying, just hiding away in his room and won’t face the problems.

“Hi,” Adam says dully when Claire has stopped laughing and mom stopped stroking his dad’s chest.

Dad shrugs off mom’s caresses and walks up to him, putting strong hands on his shoulders. Adam forces himself to look him in the eye.

“Hello, Adam,” his dad says. “How are you?”

“I’m fine,” Adam says with a shrug. “School is… fine.”

Dad nods. He won’t stop smiling, he never does, but eventually lets him go and walks back to mom and Claire.

“What do you say, girls? Should we crack open a bottle of wine?”

Adam still feels those hands on his shoulders. He still wants to shake them off.

Later, when they’re sitting around the dinner table, Adam covering from a silent threat, his mom seems to realize that she can’t ignore his existence any longer, after a whole meal of conversation about school, work, food, wine, economy and Claire. She puts her hand over his, nails red and slick.

“Mr. Peters has hardly called us at all about Adam since he started,” she says.

Adam stares into his plate. Sees his dad’s politely despiteful expression without really looking at him.

“How about that,” he says.

A pause, just the sound of his chewing jaws. Adam wants to puke.

“And I guess he still refuses to dress like a normal person?” dad says, yup, there it is. “Walking around in there like a goddamn streetwalker? Thinking he’s a little better than everyone else?”

Tuna steak and salad are moving in Adam’s stomach. He hates eating when dad is home.

“Dad, I don’t think Adam wants to dress like other people at our school because they look like fucking tools,” Claire steps in gently and takes a sip of her wine. “I don’t dress like that either.”

“That’s not really the same thing, honey,” dad says, still smiling. “You don’t dress that way to show everyone how cool you are. But Adam does, doesn’t he? You won’t let the _man_ get you down? You don’t need no education, right?”

Something breaks inside Adam, and even the nausea calms down. He even looks up.

“You’re right, dad,” he says, he, too, polite. “I should dress like a constipated Trump wannabe? Then I should talk my way to the top? Because I’d want to be just like you.”

Then he stands up and puts his dishes away so Maria doesn’t have to do it. He manages to get out of there before dad got what he said.

xxxxxxxxx

It’s getting dark.

Adam is lying on the bed. Staring at the ceiling.

The evil genie is restless, he feels it. Something moving, pushing up, getting out. Sort of like the dinner he had earlier, and almost as unsettling. It feels like he’s bigger than his room, the whole house, like he’s about to blow out the roof.

At least dad let him get away, he hasn’t had any ramifications of what he said at the dinner table. Somehow, dad has to appreciate how boring their relationship would be if Adam never pushed back.

Maybe he should see it as a good thing that he’s feeling this way. He still has something inside, and it separates him from the idiots in his family, his school, this whole fucking side of town. He’s scared of becoming like them, deep down, never apparent. It’s like there’s not that much separating him from them, in the meantime as he’ll never fit in, and sometimes he catches a few words from a conversation between other people his age, in school or on the subway, and he gets cold with despair when he doesn’t _understand,_ he doesn’t get why they talk that way or what’s the purpose of anything they say.

Those are the days when Adam has to get home, drink five cups of coffee and reorganize his bookshelf, draw word bubbles in the papers, paint his fingernails purple, jerk off until he dazes off across the keyboard. All those things to get away from the question that’s getting harder to ignore: _if you’re not one of them, who are you?_

He doesn’t get that far tonight, though. Just when it’s sneaking up on him, someone knocks on the door, and Adam sits up.

“Yeah?”

Maria opens up. She knows that he and dad had a fight, so she looks all soft and understanding. Adam doesn’t get as surprised as he’d like to have been when Lawrence walks past her, smiling almost as sweetly and nervous as she does. He’s wearing a tee and jeans that are torn in the crotch. Similar to what Adam is wearing. He almost doesn’t recognize him.

“Hi.”

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Adam asks, more as a general wonder than an insult.

Lawrence shrugs and tries to look like he’s not soaking in every inch of Adam’s room, the big bed, TV, expensive carpet.

“I had nothing to do. You wanna go for a walk?”

Adam hesitates for a moment. The genie says no, but even if he hadn’t known how Lawrence really lives, he wouldn’t be able to protest too much as he is now.

Standing in front of him like this, hands in his pockets, hair carelessly pushed to the side, Lawrence doesn’t look like the rich kid Adam thought him for. He looks like a teenager.

“Sure,” he says, standing up.

xxxxxxxxx

It’s like walking with Wendy. And also nothing like it.

The air tastes different, but maybe that’s because of where they’re walking. And just like when he’s with Wendy, he planned for them to be out for maybe half an hour, but it doesn’t turn out that way. More like he looks at his watch two hours later and wonders why the hands moved so fast.

Then there’s the areas Adam leads him through, but that’s to be expected. And he talks less to Adam, and most things they say are passive aggressive insults, followed by a giggle from either party. They don’t know each other well enough to tease, and none of them care.

“Why are you even here?” Adam suddenly asks when they’ve been walking for a while. “Who’s taking care of that little sister you’re so fucking hung up on? Because please don’t tell me you left her with your mom.”

Lawrence lowers his gaze. Doesn’t really have the energy to be ashamed.

“Yeah, I did,” he says, tucking his hands in his pockets. “But she’s a heavy sleeper, so she won’t wake up if… I mean, if…”

“If she starts shooting up on the floor next to the crib?” Adam says venomously and takes his cigarettes out of his pocket. “Do _you_ believe that?”

Lawrence scoffs.

“If you’re trying to guilt trip me, it’s not working,” he says. “She’ll be fine. She won’t be like mom. Neither will Daniel.”

Adam nods indifferently. Looks away.

“It’s not drugs,” Lawrence adds in an absurd need to defend himself.

Adam shrugs minutely and exhales smoke.  

“There’s a Daniel too?”

“Yeah,” Lawrence says, looking at his shoes. “And a Wendy.”

“Another sister?”

Lawrence smiles wearily.

“Sometimes I think she is. But no. Not that I know of.”

Adam smiles.

“And you’re getting them all out of… wherever it is you come from?” he says, looking Lawrence in the eye since the first time since they started this conversation.

Lawrence swallows.

“Somna.”

Adam flinches. He seems to fight a sudden urge to seem compassionate. Lawrence isn’t sure he appreciates it.

He has no reason to be surprised. If you’re poor in Chicago, there aren’t a lot of other places to live. It just feels weird to have a name for it. He probably figured Lawrence lives in some kind of general, fictional Poor Land.

Doesn’t realize until now that if you live in Chicago at all, there’s a greater chance that you live in Somna. They’d count Adam as a lucky minority.

“Fuck.”

“Yeah.”

Adam purses his lips. The cigarette tilts dangerously.

“And you’re hoping to do this all by yourself?”

“Yeah.”

“How?”

Shrug.

“I never figured it’d be easy. But I managed to get the opportunity to go to high school. _I’ll_ get out. What am I supposed to do with them then, just leave ‘em?”

Adam nods slowly.

“Makes sense.”

Lawrence knows he’s thinking that he doesn’t need to take on more responsibility. It annoys him even though Adam doesn’t say it.

They stop by a dock that Lawrence hasn’t seen before. Or, why would he have. He stands on the bridge for a damn near full minute, awestruck by clean water for the sunset to reflect in. When Adam realizes he won’t keep walking, he rolls his eyes and sits down to show his reluctant admission to this lame situation. Lawrence sits down next to him. The smoke from Adam’s cigarette unravels into the sky. They say almost nothing until Adam huffs with annoyance and gets up, and Lawrence realizes that they’ve reached the limit of sentimental moments allowed in one night.

They’re back by Adam’s front door about half an hour later. Adam places his hand on the knob, puts out his third cigarette on the doorframe and turns to Lawrence with that look you get when you don’t know how to say goodbye to someone.

“We should do this again,” Lawrence says, extremely awkward, looking at anything that isn’t Adam’s face. “But we’re not… like…”

Adam smiles. It’s more sincere than Lawrence has seen him smile before.

“Don’t worry,” he says and opens the door. “See you tomorrow.”

Lawrence smiles, too, as he turns around and walks away.


	10. I'll Be the Devil on Your Shoulder

One of the last memories Adam has of loving his sister is when he got his Gameboy.

He was eight, maybe nine, it was at least before the whole deal with dad had started in earnest, and Claire a year younger. He’d gotten his Gameboy, they were playing Tetris, and he was the big brother and of course beat her again and again. Claire thought it was fun for about ten minutes, then she threw the game at the wall and said it was stupid. Adam accepted this, and told her that if she wanted, they’d go make muffins instead. They did, and he got chocolate frosting in his hair as punishment for the Tetris incident.

Something Adam can think back at smiling. A shameful smile, because yeah, he’s ashamed of ever having loved her.

In the meantime as he doesn’t get what changed since then. They loved each other then because they were siblings, and aren’t they still? Their parents shouldn’t be able to fuck that up.

He thinks that sometimes.

But then he feels the evil genie, and he remembers that he can’t afford to think like that. Not about her. She’s one of Those Other People, and no matter what she likes to pretend, there’s no way she can like him. It’s just a matter of time before she gets that.

xxxxxxxxx

She’s having one of her bad days. Lawrence gets painfully aware, but still has to leave them with her.

Not even he gets how he does it. His whole body’s fighting it, and he’s not sure how focused he’ll be once he gets to school, that fucking school that he lives and dies for now days. Feet moving ahead but the knowledge of what he left Lou and Daniel with is like a cold lump in his stomach, like that feeling you get when you realize you forgot the stove on.

Except it’s not a tiny heart attack lasting for a few seconds. It’s with him through the day. The only thing getting him ahead is that thought that he _has to,_ it’s for them, in order to make them happy in the future he has to make them unhappy today. It’s completely logical thinking, but the look Lou gave him before he left home lingers, no matter how logical he tries to be.

Lawrence does get in time to class, but he has to run the last block, sweaty and out of breath once he finds his classroom. His teacher gives him a glance as she’s letting them in, and that’s enough to make the weight in his belly even colder, burning and pushing. She doesn’t say anything, but he knows she’s thinking it.

Lawrence enters the classroom, clutching to his notebook, and he feels his gaze involuntarily wandering amongst the teens trying to find a place to sit.

Where the fuck is Adam? Doesn’t he get that he’s needed here? Lawrence has stopped denying it, he wants Adam here, someone to calm him down just by the attitude that he hates when it’s on someone else, but somehow is his saving grace when it’s Adam’s.

The teacher starts talking, Lawrence picks up his pen and starts writing down every single thing she says, even though he knows the information that’s actually useful won’t come up until it’s been another ten minutes.

He keeps an eye on the door. Adam doesn’t show.

xxxxxxxxx

Adam’s rarely in school before lunch, Lawrence should’ve seen that pattern by now. And if he is, he usually leaves afterwards. This is one of the days in which he shows up after lunch, which should mean he’s gotten a lot of sleep, but when Lawrence sees him in the cafeteria, he has dark circles under his eyes.

They never sit together during lunch. Adam’s well aware that Lawrence will mutilate himself beyond recognition to pass as One of Those Who Are Respected, so he doesn’t even try to approach him in public. Lawrence has never denied this, to himself or Adam, so he’s sitting with those who actually _do_ have rich parents.

Adam doesn’t mind. He’s not crazy about food, and Lawrence seems like the type of dude who would nag him to eat until Adam snapped and threw the slimy cafeteria spaghetti in his face. He’s by himself, with his feet up, reading.

People’s reactions to Adam saying he loves to read are just amazing. He knows he doesn’t look like the type who’d voluntarily read Nietzsche and Wilde, and that just makes it funnier.

He may not be cultural, but he’s an esthetic at heart. The words in his books are transcendent, burning through the pages, almost forbidden even though the whole world reads them, and that appeals to both sides of him.

_All but lust is turned to dust, in humanity’s machine._

Adam flips the page, then sees Lawrence’s fingertips on the table in front of him. He looks up, Lawrence has that look on his face that he does when something’s weighing him down. He makes a dog-ear on the right page.

“Care to join me?”

Lawrence smiles, not even pretending to take him seriously.

“I was hoping you’d join me outside,” he says quietly. “I’d like to… why are you reading Oscar Wilde?”

Adam smiles coyly and shoves the book into his backpack.

“You think I can’t read the classics?”

Lawrence scoffs.

“Oscar Wilde was a bisexual, drugged up junkie with as much impulse control as my three year old little brother. Of course you’d like him.”

Adam laughs and stands up, brings his tray. Despite the time that’s passed since they started hanging out, it’s not until now that he sees that Lawrence really is allowed to say stuff like this. Whether he likes it or not, and even though he’s still not sure how it happened, they’re friends now, and it’s going to be this way from now on.

When they’re out on the schoolyard, Adam takes out his cigarettes, and Lawrence rolls his eyes as they go to the sidewalk outside the greenish copper fence marking the borders of the school area. There, Adam lights his smoke and inhales gratefully, as Lawrence gives him a venomous look.

“You know how many kinds of cancer you can get from smoking?”

“You know how much I don’t care?” Adam replies, in that sugary tone that Lawrence already hates. “God, you should be a doctor, Lawrence.”

Lawrence sour expression falls apart, and he smiles, in that stupid optimistic way.

“I’m going to be a doctor.”

Adam looks at him.

“That’s how I’ll do it. I’ll be a doctor.”

Adam smiles crookedly over his cigarette.

“You’ll be awesome,” he says sincerely.

Lawrence smiles back, but with a lowered gaze. Like he’s kind of ashamed of it.

“But that’s not what you wanted to talk about,” Adam goes on.

Lawrence shakes his head.

“She… she’s having a bad day,” he presses out.

Adam nods slowly. Another drag.

“Sometimes she has days when she at least _wants_ to be a mom,” Lawrence says. “And she gets pancakes, and pacifiers for Daniel… instead of cigarettes, I mean. But there are days… she’s like that today, she…”

He swallows and looks down at his shoes. The holes by the toes. Adam’s not the kind of comforter that wants to cuddle and whisper nice things in his ear, he just looks at him. Waits.

“She just gets so _mean,”_ Lawrence says, there’s no better word for it. “She asked me why I’m even in school when I’ll never be nothing and not good at nothing… she said I was _selfish_ for spending so much money on these clothes… I mean, she called _me… selfish…_ and she told Lou she was a mistake, she’s only here because she couldn’t afford an abortion… and she…”

He can’t go on. He keeps staring at his shoes and swallows again. Adam’s a sped-up smoker, so he’s already done with his cigarette when Lawrence quiets down. He drops the butt on the ground, smothers it with his heel and doesn’t say anything for a while. Only sighs heavily and rakes his fingers through his hair, like he doesn’t want to give any advice if he’s not entirely sure that every word is exactly the way it should be.

“Don’t ever believe anything coming out of her mouth, Lawrence,” he then says, dead serious. “As long as you don’t, you’re good.”

Lawrence looks up. Adam shakes his head, and for a second, he looks almost grown up.

“People in these situations always start blaming themselves,” Adam says, with a bitter undertone. “Especially people like you. You get how happy your fucking mom would be then, if she doesn’t even have to say shit like that to you, because you’re saying it to yourself? Don’t give her that angle. She doesn’t deserve it.”

Lawrence clears his throat. Now that Adam has eye contact with him, it’s hard for Lawrence to keep it. He shoves his hands deep into his pockets, clears his throat, looks at anything, the girls smoking by the fence, Adam’s shoelace that’s torn and frayed at the end, anything but his face.

No one’s said it to him out loud before.

“I don’t know what else to do,” he says and shrugs, a hollow little laugh and looks up again.

Adam looks at the giant clock face above the gates to the school.

“Than blaming yourself?” he says and starts walking back to the schoolyard. “It’ll come. I think it will.”

Lawrence follows.

“Aren’t you going home now that you’ve gotten your free lunch?” he asks as Adam holds the door for him. Adam grins.

“Claire’s home sick, and if I go home now I’ll have to watch everyone dot around with her,” he says jokingly, but as always when he’s talking about her, there’s truth beneath. “She’s the cutest little thing when she’s well, imagine what they’re like around her when she’s sick.”

Lawrence takes two steps of the stairs in a long stride.

“Why do you hate her?”

“Why not?” Adam says.

He sounds too defensive for that to be the only explanation.

xxxxxxxxx

They keep doing this. Adam’s not entirely sure what it is they’re doing, or why it’s working, but it’s fine.

They’re so different. Lawrence annoys him as much as those other good kids, really. There’s no logical explanation of why Adam happily spends all the short time he’s in school with him, and still isn’t the least bit tired of him if Lawrence shows up at his house later that night and doesn’t even ask if he wants to go out anymore, just shows up at the door, and Adam gets up right away.

At some point, Mr. Peters sits Adam down for _a talk,_ it’s the first time it happens without Lawrence being in the office with him. Mr. Peters wonders if Adam’s thought about how it can affect Lawrence’s grades that they’ve started hanging out. He says they’ve noticed that they’re spending every available and unavailable second together, does Adam think he hasn’t noticed? He says birds of a feather flock together.

“You know how goddamn smart this kid is,” Mr. Peters says and leans forward with his enormous hands on his knees. “If he does his work, he’ll definitely get a scholarship, and that’s not something we just throw at anyone. Do you really want to ruin that for him?”

“Why would I want that?” Adam asks.

“Of course you don’t,” Peters says. “But especially at your age… you’re known by the company you keep. It’s a cliché, but it’s true.”

“If Lawrence doesn’t get a little more like me, he’ll get a nervous breakdown and start chopping up hookers,” Adam says.

Mr. Peters doesn’t have an answer for that. Adam gets to leave shortly after.

Adam has his own evil genie. Now he’ll get to be one himself, for someone who needs it more than he does. If Lawrence didn’t have a devil on one shoulder, the weight of the angel on the other side would make his spine crooked.

xxxxxxxxx

One day, Lawrence is in the cafeteria with the rich kids.

Or, everyone’s rich here but him. But the students by this table are part of the elite, and very few are allowed here. He’s worked the entire semester to get up to their table. Being here now is a big enough victory to get him anywhere he wants in life.

The captain of the rich table is James, and you’d know that even if you’d never sat here before. Lawrence has never questioned it, and he doesn’t talk to anyone except him, even though he thinks James is pretty annoying.

He’s not in a position to question the rules here. Lawrence is allowed here because they haven’t seen the remains of tomato sauce on his shirt that he tried to get away with hot water yesterday, or that he can barely keep his head up because he hasn’t had breakfast, not today either.

Or that he’s hiding his hands under the table, since he’s taken the concept of keeping his nails short a little too far, and his fingertips aren’t just bleeding, they’ve adapted a purplish-red shade and throbs alarmingly. There’s no point in trying to fool himself when he spends so much energy fooling them.

They’re jumping between subjects. Most of them are about school, how much they hate it, especially that teacher. Well-phrased negativity hiding under the sound of scraping chairs, the slurping sound from the water cooler by the corner.

“Hey Lawrence,” James suddenly says, and Lawrence damn near flinches. “You’re one of the good ones. What was our homework for today?”

It takes Lawrence a couple of seconds to grasp that James has addressed him.

“Page thirteen to thirty-three in the history book,” he says and takes a bite of hid food.

Tries to keep himself from eating his whole portion in one bite. God. He’s so hungry. Always hungry.

James makes some kind of displeased growling sound and pushes the pasta around on his plate.

“I don’t get how they expect us to do all this stuff,” he says, and the others nod affirmatively. “It’s like, ‘hey, life, I didn’t see you behind all that school!’”

“What does it matter to you?” another one of the rich kids says. “You don’t do it anyway.”

She’s one of the few who are allowed to say that. James grins in a way that’s supposed to seem embarrassed even though it’s not.

“I don’t _have_ to do it,” he says. “I just feel bad for the ones who don’t have a job ready for them by the time they graduate. Adam, for example; since we can be sure he hasn’t done a damn thing since the semester started, how’s he supposed to get by in life?”

Affirmative nods.

“Do you know how he gets money for food?” one of the rich kids says, and goes on without a pause: “His parents kicked him out. So he turns tricks. Downtown. And hitchhikes here every morning.”

Glee mixed with horror. James shoots Claire, sitting a few tables down from them, a compassionate glance.

“Get how Claire still turned out okay,” he says.

Affirmative nods. For the first time, Lawrence doesn’t join them.

He doesn’t even know what he says to excuse himself from the table. He just stands up, says something, leaves. He’s not sure what, blood is pounding in his ears, anger burning worse than his fingertips.

Lawrence won’t join the rich kids again after this. He and Adam are back outside the schoolyard, he’s as wound up as the last time, spits out an abundance of curses and Adam listens patiently while taking long drags from his cigarette.

“They don’t have to do _shit_ to get ahead in life!” Lawrence hisses, fists opening and closing irregularly. “I have to work my ass off and take responsibility for both me and my family, and _they…_ they don’t even have to do their fucking homework! And if they’d have to they’d have some fucking maid to do it! And they _know_ it! They don’t even have to _try,_ it’s…”

“Wasn’t it you who thought that poor people should stop complaining about the upper class?” Adam interrupts softly. Lawrence shoots him an angry glance.

“That’s not what I mean. You got to fucking _work_ for it.”

“Why?” Adam smiles teasingly, he looks unbearably pleased about painting Lawrence into a corner. “Some people have to have it worse off for other people to have it better. Right?”

Lawrence pretends not to hear him. Those are his words, they’ve had this discussion before and Adam’s always looked at him like he’s an idiot when he’s explained that it’s all really about trying harder. You can always try harder.

“I’m just saying…” Lawrence spits out, without knowing what he’s saying, “it’s like… it’s not _fair!”_

He quiets down to catch his breath. Adam’s teasing smile has faded, and now he puts his cigarette out to clasp his hands loosely in front of himself.

“Maybe you should learn something from them,” he says.

Lawrence turns sharply to look at him.

“What?”

“Don’t get me wrong,” Adam says, smiling again. “I hate them every bit as much as you do. And of course I think they should stop sucking up to their dads and do something real. But are you really the prototype for doing things right?”

Lawrence scoffs.

“Is it a bad thing to work your ass off on your own?”

“No,” Adam says. “But when was the last time you ate? Before today?”

Lawrence doesn’t reply. Adam nods.

“And when you can afford something, you give it to the kids, or Wendy.”

Lawrence scoffs again. Already feeling how it’s losing its edge.

“Should I let them starve?”

“Again, no,” Adam says. “I mean, the shit you do for them… I’d never do it, and fuck knows I can push when I want to. But no one’s going to give you a blue ribbon for breaking yourself, okay?”

Lawrence shakes his head frenetically before he’s even finished the sentence. Still pretending to be angry even though he feels something break by Adam saying that.

“We’ve been through this,” he sputters. “I have to do it, who else is gonna…”

He quiets down mid-sentence. These fucking moments when it hits him.

Adam looks like he’s about to shrug, but his eyes stick to Lawrence’s fingers, that he’s taken out of his pockets for the first time since they came out here, and then he frowns and grabs his hand before Lawrence has time to pull it away.

“The fuck did you do to your hand?” he says, appalled, as he’s looking from Lawrence’s face to his throbbing, inflamed fingertips.

Lawrence cringes and wriggles it away. He tries to avoid eye contact, because Adam’s looking at him in this stupid way, worried, and Lawrence isn’t sure how to handle it.

“We don’t have nail clippers at home,” he mutters and hides his hands away. “They were getting too long.”

“So the spoiled little shits that you’ve been whining about for the past half hour would’ve seen that you can’t afford nail clippers?” Adam damn near yells. “The _horror!_ The thought is ghastly!”

Lawrence tries to scowl at him, but can’t help but laugh.

“You wouldn’t even know those words if you weren’t such a fucking nerd,” he says, and Adam smiles, too.

“Lawrence,” he says, so steadily that Lawrence has to look at him. “I’ll buy you a pair of fucking nail clippers, okay?”

Lawrence shakes his head.

“It’s not that. Clippers cost two fucking dollars, max. She’s not allowed to have sharp objects at home.”

Adam sighs and hangs his head.

“Fine,” he says, in a tone like he doesn’t get why Adam insists on having a psycho mom. “You can come to my house and cut your nails when they grow out, is that better? You can even have some cash. I’m feeling nice today.”

An almost overwhelming amount of relief washes over Lawrence. He tries not to show it too clearly, but Adam sees. Jesus, they actually know each other that well.

“Does this mean you’ll stay for the whole day for me?” Lawrence says.

Adam laughs and starts walking back to the school.

“Don’t get ideas,” he says. “You don’t mean that much.”

xxxxxxxx

Adam wishes his dad could go on another business trip. The only reason he hasn’t started living on the streets is that his dad is rarely home for more than one or maybe two weeks at a time, but this time, he’s actually there for a while. Every day when Adam gets home he’s hoping that he’ll be gone again, but before he even sees him, he feels his presence, like a cold wind through the apartment.

They’re by the dinner table now, all four of them. Adam still barely looks up from the plate, still not eating much. Bites keep swelling in his mouth, he feels dirty inside.

Dad’s been talking and joking and ha ha ha with Claire and mom during the whole dinner, but now it’s been quiet a few seconds too long, and Adam knows it’s coming, that turning point when he gets sick of being nice and acknowledges Adam’s presence for the first time today.

His dad wipes the corners of his mouth with the napkin and turns to him with such a nice smile. Adam sees all this without actually looking at him.

“So, Adam,” he says. “How was school today? Were you there for half an hour at least?”

Adam doesn’t look up.

“It was fine.”

Dad laughs without a trace of humor.

“Fine? You know how much it costs to keep you there, don’t you?”

“It’s school, dad,” Adam says coldly. “How fucking excited you expect me to be about it?”

“Not at all, of course,” dad says. “You are the way you are, after all. I should probably just be happy that you thank us for dinner.”

“ _You_ don’t fucking make it,” Adam hisses, looking up now, one burning glance.

The slaps come in three sharp bursts, not a second in between, and Adam gets up before dad can see the blood trickling from his bottom lip, searing tears, he won’t get to see shit.

The silverware is clinking softly by the table. There was no break. Before Adam slams the front door he hears his mom’s frail, thin voice, like she’s not sure she’s allowed to talk yet:

“Claire, honey, how is school work going?”

xxxxxxxxx

Adam isn’t drunk. He’s pretty proud of that. Not everyone would manage to be surrounded by people who can barely stand and still be sober. He’s been good tonight.

He promised Lawrence to be there for the first class tomorrow. They have a test in biology, and he’ll need all the support he can get.

Lawrence always studies to the very last minute, until the teacher lets them in, and he’s always dead pale, biting his non-existent nails and staring at the textbook in front of him without really seeing it. Adam’s told him he only freaks himself out more by doing that, but it doesn’t matter. He sits like that until Adam takes the book away from him.

It’s all the expectations, Lawrence said earlier that day, when they were at Adam’s place before his parents had come home. Sitting on his bed after Adam had cleaned his infected wounds, talking about those things that usually annoy the hell out of him, but now seem like the best spent hours Adam’s had in a long time.

Adam leans against an empty car wreck and watches the drunken scenarios. Someone’s lit a fire in an oil drum, it puts a yellow glow over everyone’s face.

Most people here are probably almost as well off as he is, but they don’t look like it, with all the torn clothes and frizzy hair. Neon pink extensions and corsets are expensive, but if it’s who you are, it’s more important to spend money on that than on food. And a party can be free, you just show up here and steal booze from home. Either way, you can’t tell who they usually are. You can be whomever you want.

That’s why Adam likes this place more than any other in the world.

He takes a drag and is about to put his cigarette out when a girl walks up to him. She’s hot, and not even that drunk. Her arms are thin and eyes painted so black she looks like the picture of Alice Cooper she has on her t-shirt. She smiles that way with blood red lips. Adam smiles back. If he’s not going to drink, this seems like a good as any way to end the night.

Adam loves girls. Kind of weird, since the only two women he really knows, he hates intently. He loves the anatomy, shapes, the taste, but somehow, he knows he doesn’t love them the right way, not the way he’s supposed to. More like a dog loves a chew toy.

This girl walks up to him, gets close. Then she touches the bruise on his cheek.

“What happened?” she asks.

Her voice is hoarse, she’s been smoking since she was a kid. Adam’s smile fades.

“My dad beat me up,” he says simply.

Something lights up in her eyes. Her fingers move to his hair.

“Does it hurt?” she asks softly.

“Yeah,” Adam says.

Pause.

“My dad is an asshole, too,” she says.

Adam nods. She’s very close now. Her hand not moving.

“I don’t want to go home yet,” she says, barely more than a whisper now, her face is right up close. That momentary, fairly pointless lust is awakened in Adam, and he grabs her hand.

“Come on,” he mumbles and pulls her away from the fire, even though he doesn’t really care if someone sees them. He’s seen more people fuck in backseats here than he cares to remember, and he assumes it’s the same for them. They wouldn’t care, even if they registered it, as drunk as most of them are by now.

He’s going to find an unoccupied car wreck, do this girl, and go home. Hope that dad isn’t up, since he probably hasn’t gotten his full punishment for his comment by the dinner table. If dad is awake, he’ll take whatever he gets for that, and go to bed.

The upside is that he’ll get to go to school tomorrow.

The thought hits Adam then, despite the situation. But he’s not that surprised. For some reason, it feels totally natural to find someone who won’t be offended if he doesn’t keep in touch, and still look forward more to going to school than having sex with her.

He almost laughs when he pulls her into a fumbly kiss before opening a car door. So that’s who he’s become.

He’s spent the whole day in either emotional apathy or unbearable pain, and getting pushed down to his back with a hot girl sitting across his lap doesn’t make him feel much more than that. But when he’ll get to see the tiny smile he manages to draw out on Lawrence’s face before the test tomorrow, he’ll get happy for real, in a weird, self-fulfilling way.

Going there and being moral support for Lawrence and knowing that he’s needed, is one of the few things that make him feel meaningful.

It definitely beats sweaty hands in the backseat of a car, and knowing that he’ll have to go home eventually.


	11. If This is It

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm almost done with the filler stuff I promise

“Who did Hitler form a pact with?”

“Stalin.”

“Why?”

Lawrence rubs a finger over his nose.

“Because… he was hoping that… by teaming up with Russia, he’d get to do whatever he wanted in Poland.”

“Good. And why did Stalin agree to team up?”

Lawrence sighs and hangs his head.

“Because…”

“Come on,” Adam says, trying to make eye contact over the edge of the history textbook. “You know this. Why would he form a pact with his enemy?”

Lawrence moans, puts a hand over his forehead, biting his lip. Desperate for knowledge that he makes himself forget.

“He…”

Then he passes that line again, when the ambition doesn’t help but only ruins.

“Fuck!” he yells and stands up, pacing back and forth.

Adam sighs and puts the book aside. He hates seeing Lawrence this way, and maybe it’s open to interpretation whether it’s good or not that he’s done that so many times that he’s used to it by now.

“It’s just a test,” he says.

Lawrence scoffs.

“Just my fucking future, you mean,” he hisses, subconsciously opening and closing fists. “Is that all you got, Adam? You know it just pisses me off.”

Adam smiles halfheartedly.

“I’m probably hoping that if I say it enough times, you’ll start to listen,” he says softly.

Lawrence shoots him another annoyed glance. Adam’s smile just gets wider.

“And even if it’s true that this is your life, and that if you got a B the world would implode and the dinosaurs would come back to life and eat us all,” he goes on, “you don’t really have to worry about that. Because it’s about as relevant as you failing in the first place. It won’t happen. Okay?”

Lawrence seems to calm down a bit. His breaths get less frantic, his hands stop gripping something invisible. But just as Adam’s about to ask him to sit down so they can go on, the sparks fly up again, Lawrence gets that look in his eyes that he gets when he’s talking to himself and not to Adam.

“How the fuck would you know?” he exclaims and starts pacing again. “I don’t remember this shit when I’m in your fucking bedroom, how the fuck am I supposed to handle the test? I’ll have a fucking _breakdown,_ I’ll…”

He quiets down like someone’s pressed an off-button, and Adam clasps his hands, leaning forward.

Lawrence will always be the skittish one of them. That’s one side of him, at least, the other is so cautious about keeping his feelings bottled up that not even Adam gets how he does it. It’s like seeing all his own idiot habits mirrored in someone else. With the difference that now, it’s affecting someone he actually cares about.

“Only you decide if you’re going to pass this test, Lawrence,” Adam says. “But as you put it so eloquently yourself, there’s no way in hell you can do it if you can’t even study for it. And not even I can fix up your nerves. So try the following…”

He’s quiet until he’s sure they have eye contact. Then he says, pressing every syllable:

“Fucking. Calm. Down.”

Lawrence stares at him with something almost resembling hatred, and Adam laughs.

“You can hate me all you want. But sit down so we can go through this. I’d rather not see how pissed you’d get if you actually got a B.”

Lawrence stands there for a few seconds. Then he exhales a breath he seems to have been holding since he got up, and sits back down. Adam smiles and opens the book.

“Where were we?” he says and finds the page they were on. “Stalin agreed to his conditions. Why did he do that?”

Lawrence is quiet for a bit. Then he lights up like a kid who just found five bucks on the ground.

“He’d already tried to team up with the Brits and the French, and it didn’t work!”

Adam looks at him over the edge of the book.

“I told you you knew this!”

Then they grin like morons for a bit before they go on.

xxxxxxxxx

Lawrence gets home late that night. It’s February, the end of the blizzard. The days are warmer, but the nights are so nightmarish with their cold that the fingers get stiff and it’s hard to get the keys out of his pocket, and he tries to tell himself that the fucking egg cartons make a difference. He and Wendy spent Christmas day looking for fabric to cover them up with, and it ended with them ripping the seat covers out of a few cars in their parking lot, and pinned them to the cartons with thumbtacks. It got a little warmer, but Lawrence knows it doesn’t matter if it did. Every time he looks up at the wall, he remembers that night, Adam balancing on the rickety chair. That’s going to remain, no matter how cold it gets.

When he opens the door, he sees Wendy sitting by the kitchen table with his blanket around her. Lou and Daniel are fast asleep in the crib, and Lawrence doesn’t look at mom’s bed. He knows that sound, the strain of the springs in the mattress and the grunting, like a fucking pig.

Stomach turning. He hates her.

“Who’s that?” asks whoever’s fucking his mom this time.

“It’s my son,” she says, actually sounding bored. “Don’t mind him.”

Lawrence grits his teeth and beckons Wendy to come.

“Let’s go out,” he says. “Bring the blanket.”

Wendy nods and gets up. A cloud of dust from the blanket swirls behind her. Fucking dust. Always there. Under the skin.

They go out, Lawrence is cautious about closing the door as loudly as he can. He avoids eye contact with her as they go to the parking lot, because he knows that she’s ashamed, and that she feels bad for him, which he can’t stand and desperately need at the same time.

When they find the Volvo that they usually sit atop when it’s warm, they open the doors and get inside. Lawrence’s heart hurts when he sees Wendy’s worn sneakers under the edge of the blanket.

“We got any beer?” Lawrence asks with a sigh when they’ve sat there for a bit.

Wendy opens the glove compartment. There’s a brown paper bag inside, she takes two cans of the four they have left.

“At least it stays cold now,” she says and hands one to him. Lawrence chuckles tiredly.

They open the cans, drink. Don’t talk. Lawrence is scared he’ll say something he’ll regret. But eventually, Wendy can’t keep it inside.

“He didn’t come over until after they were asleep,” she says, sounding like she wants to get it out as fast as she can because he’ll cut her off if she doesn’t. “And they didn’t wake up… I don’t think they woke up. I know I should’ve brought them outside, but it was cold, I figured it was better if they were…”

Lawrence is straining not to put his hands over his ears.

“Fucks sake, I’m not mad at you,” he moans and pinches the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes. “It’s good that you were there, or I don’t know what…”

He quiets down, trying to think of what to say. He shouldn’t be mad at her. When she’s like this, she only hears the bad stuff, she wouldn’t even register all the wonderful stuff he has to say about her.

“Don’t talk about yourself like that,” he eventually says and looks at her. “Or, don’t talk about your… efforts like that. I wouldn’t have gotten this far without you. They probably wouldn’t have either. You’re not a burden, you’re… you do a fuckload more for them than she does.”

Wendy seems to search his face for any sign that he doesn’t mean it, but eventually, she smiles embarrassedly and puts her hand on top of his.

“Okay.”

Lawrence has to smile, too, even though he’s pitch black inside. He gets happy when she’s happy, it’s actually that simple. Then he puts his arms around her shoulders, and she scoots closer, puts her head on his chest. They stay like that, just a few seconds when he can just feel safe, until he has to ask.

“She… it was a bad day today, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Wendy says quietly. “I think she was out of smokes, she was so _fucking_ on edge. She started doing that thing with Lou again, ‘if I’d afforded an abortion, blah blah blah…”

She stops talking. Probably sensing how pissed Lawrence is without seeing his face.

“I don’t think Lou knows what an abortion is,” Lawrence says halfheartedly.

She probably doesn’t. She still gets to hear about it every time mom gets like this.

“You’ve been to the welfare?” Wendy asks and takes a sip of her beer.

“Yeah. Told ‘em mom’s looking for work.”

“They believed you?”

“Probably not. But I can’t keep working the crazy angle. I can’t prove that if she won’t get any treatment.”

“Wouldn’t you get benefits if she was admitted or something?”

Lawrence shakes his head, holding back a very snarky answer. It’s been a long time since he tried to see any kind of logic in the welfare system.

“That only goes if you have a job. Or whatever. We’re not getting it is the point.”

Wendy rolls her eyes, but fortunately drops the subject. They’re quiet for a bit.

“Do you know that stuff on your test now?” she then asks.

“Yeah,” Lawrence says absentmindedly. “Or, well… I have no idea. I guess it’s cool. I won’t know until I get the results back. I can’t really judge by feeling, because I always feel like I’m fucked.”

Wendy nods.

“Adam helps you study?”

Lawrence smiles.

“He’s not very good at it.”

She nods again. He already feels a difference in her movements; something’s bothering her.

“Dude, I’m sorry,” Wendy says after a few seconds, disentangles herself from his arms and sits back up. “I have no right to say this. You’d die or something if all you had was me and your family. You’ve found a friend, and that’s awesome, and I’m happy for you. There. That’s it. I’ll shut up.”

Lawrence sighs and turns to her. He knew they’d have to have this talk sooner or later. He’s just surprised she dared to bring it up at all, She usually refuses to criticize anything he does.

“You don’t have to be happy that I met him, Wendy,” he says solemnly. “I’m also… you’ve been like all I got for… almost all my life, I have no idea how to act with someone else in the picture just like… you know.”

Wendy smiles wearily. Lawrence hangs his head, sighs again, totally lost on how he’s supposed to say this. This should be when he explains his and Adam’s relationship, and how the fuck is he supposed to do that?

“When I’m with Adam, I feel _normal,_ you know?” he finally says, almost panicky. “I feel… like a _teen!_ I get to, like, laugh at stupid shit and study and sit on a real bed in his own room, you get it, he has his _own_ room, and I… or, I mean, we… this…”

He quiets down and gestures, directionless, at their whole lives, this whole situation.

“This isn’t fucking normal!” he almost shouts, and laughs hysterically. “We… we’ve never had a conversation that’s not about whether or not we’re going to survive the week! And now… we’re sitting in a car because I can’t be in the same room as my mom, and your mom left you at the goddamn playground!”

Wendy, who up until now has looked like she wonders what the hell he’s talking about, suddenly throws her head back laughing. Lawrence laughs, too, right now, their lives can be funny instead of sad, and if he doesn’t laugh he’s going to start crying.

He never new that he needed the normal stuff. He’s not sure if he’s grateful or not that Adam’s opened his eyes to it.

They calm down after a while, roaring laughter turns into soft giggling, and Wendy comes to enough to put her hand over his again.

“You’ve earned it,” she says, with emphasis, meaning every word. “Don’t let me make you think anything else just cause I don’t got an Adam.”

Lawrence nods, squeezing her hand. He has one of those moments when he loves her so much that it almost gets too much, before she straightens up again.

“You should be able to go back now,” she says. “It usually doesn’t take more than, like, ten minutes, right?”

Lawrence sighs.

“No, but if I go back there now, I’ll hit her in the head with a frying pan. Can’t we sit here for a while?”

“Course we can.”

She puts her head back on his chest. Lawrence kisses her forehead from an awkward angle. He’s missed this, this complete lack of normalcy with her is almost as good as the sort of normal with Adam. But with school, and Adam, and Lou, Daniel, and the fucking money that always has to be scraped up, there’s not a lot of space left for her. His old life is already crumbling, but he won’t see the ramifications of that for a bit longer.

They stay. Lawrence doesn’t know how long for. Then they go home, closing the front door as quiet as they can. Mom usually doesn’t let Wendy stay over if she’s awake to bitch about it, but now, she’s asleep on her back, open mouth, greasy hair draped over her pillow.

Wendy falls asleep next to him right away, but Lawrence stays awake in the single bed, stomach turning and going sour as he tries to think of how to make sure she has better shoes for next winter.


	12. We Don't Need More Christmas Stories

The walks get longer every day.

Adam’s not sure how or when it happens, but Lawrence somehow becomes a constant element to his day, like cigarettes and music. Lawrence shows up, about the same time, and Adam realizes he’s equally happy every time he does, just as restless and annoyed the few times he’s late.

Not that they do much once he gets there. If Lawrence has something he needs to talk about, he does, but if he doesn’t, they don’t say much. Once they get into a discussion about which one of their parents would be the best president. It’s not great, and it doesn’t have to be.

When the fall is drawing to an end and it gets colder every day, they’re sitting by the same dock they did that first night. Lawrence is again looking out at the water with damn near childlike wonder, and Adam’s very obvious with his boredom, like it’s important that Lawrence gets that they’re only doing this for his sake. They’ve been quiet for almost five minutes when Lawrence starts talking.

“I forget that there are places like these,” he says without looking at Adam. “That there’s like… a world outside of Somna.”

Adam stares indifferently at the water, but Lawrence knows that he’s listening.

“I grew up there…” he goes on, starting to hear how weird it sounds. “I grew up where there were… like… nothing like this… like, beautiful stuff.”

Adam keeps looking at the water. He wasn’t going to answer, Lawrence rarely needs response as long as he gets to say every single thing on his mind, but he starts talking before he’s aware he’s doing it.

“My parents whine about my music because it’s not _pretty,”_ he says, scratching his head. “But come on. Most of the bands sing about how you should fuck your school and do what you want, which I think is like the most beautiful thing ever.”

Lawrence smiles.

“Judging by what you told me about your sister she seems beautiful as fuck,” Adam goes on. _Judging by._ That vocabulary. “Like, in her own way. Just like Wendy, and all the shit you do for them. It’s all kind of beautiful. Or something.”

Lawrence nods slowly. They’re quiet for a bit.

“I’d do it for you, too,” he then says.

Adam scoffs.

“Don’t need it.”

Being friends is one thing. But he’s instinctively terrified whenever Lawrence even implies that he needs stuff.

xxxxxxxxx

The fall passes by quickly, and before you know it, their first semester is up. Adam gets an E in most of their classes, and their gym coach manages to raise his expectations by beginning a sentence with: “I’ll give you a D,” but shoots them down just as quick by finishing it: “if you quit smoking.”

Adam looks like a thunderstorm when Lawrence asks him what the coach said.

The last day of their semester, they get their grades. Lawrence’s are so good that he doesn’t want to show them to Adam, or anyone else, for that matter. They’re supposed to have a closing ceremony before the vacation starts, but most students don’t even show up for that day, and the ones that do run off as soon as they get their huge envelopes with their grade sheet in. They’ve gotten reward money from their folks for just making it through the semester, and they need to spend them all on drinks tonight.

“We need to think of something else to do for the evenings now,” Adam says while putting on his winter coat. “We won’t be able to be outside. The news say it’s going to be Day After Tomorrow until February.”

Lawrence has no idea what that means, but he doesn’t ask. The message comes through from all the five-inch thick-lettered headlines about BLIZZARD COMING, screaming at him from the front pages on the newsstands, and he guesses that’s what Adam’s referring to.

In fact, the mere idea of winter gets him cold inside. There _has_ to be a way to fix the crooked door, the fucking place is poorly insulated enough as it is…

He’s so wrapped up in himself that he doesn’t notice Adam looking at him.

“Lawrence?” he says with a small smile, flicking his collar up.

“Yes?”

“You need something to get through the winter?” Adam asks as they’re walking to the gates.

“No, we’re fine,” Lawrence says. “Do you happen to have any egg cartons or something so I can insulate the apartment and not have to worry about my little brother dying in his sleep?”

Adam laughs. When he opens the front doors, the cold air is like liquid, flowing beneath the collar. Lawrence could’ve just left his jacket at home, it’s the same one he had this spring and it does nothing for the cold, but Adam barely seems to notice it, with his knee-length coat that also looks nice on him. For the first time since they stopped fighting, Lawrence feels a sting of hatred.

“I know you’re not serious,” Adam says. “But not even I can afford to get you a new place, so maybe that’s the best solution.”

Lawrence rolls his eyes.

“Egg cartons?”

“Yup,” Adam says, with that look that makes it impossible for Lawrence not to agree with him. “You got a better idea?”

Lawrence doesn’t. They spend Christmas Eve getting all the egg cartons that they found or stole from home and taping them to the living room wall, and filling up as many of them as they can with little pieces of balled up fabric they found outside. And for the first time since December started, Lou forgets that her breath is a white cloud in front of her face and that she can barely move her fingers. She’s bouncing around, giggly, sparklingly happy, and immediately gets the role of Adam’s assistant, handing him the tape when he asks for it and blushing every time he smiles at her. Her joy sweeps away the dust covering everything in the apartment, wiping it clean.

Mom’s probably sitting on her bed giving them the evil eye through a cloud of cigarette smoke. Lawrence wouldn’t know, he hasn’t looked at her all night. She’s not important.

“There we go,” Adam says happily when he finally steps down from the stool he’s been using as a ladder. “Fucking palace now, isn’t it?”

The egg cartons cover literally the entire wall. They don’t even match in color; some are clean, teal, organic packs that Adam’s taken from home, the dirt-yellow from Lidl that Lawrence begged for after closing hours, some they found on the street, dark grey and damp. Lawrence smiles in that lame grateful way and probably looks stupid.

“Totally,” he says, looking around. “Now we just have to deal with the fact that the apartment looks like it’s owned by not only white trash, but insane white trash.”

Maybe he should worry about the fact that they’re ruining the wallpaper, but it doesn’t feel relevant. Their landlord won’t care, and they’ll never move out.

“Don’t worry,” Adam says. “We can find something to cover it, like… fabric or whatever. That should insulate too.”

Lawrence nods. He feels different now from what he usually feels after he’s finished something. Less worried about all the things he no doubt screwed up, but more… fulfilled. Content.

“Adam,” Lou says, looking up at him. “Lawrence told me you’re rich.”

Adam smiles patiently.

“My parents are,” he says, looking at the egg cartons again. “Unfortunately. I’d give it all to you guys, but I’d go to jail.”

Lou squints up at him. It takes her a few seconds of intense pondering before saying:

“You don’t look rich.”

A scoff behind them. Lawrence feels his happiness deflate like someone’s punched a hole in him.

Just as he thought, mom’s sitting on the bed, in filthy white top and panties, smoking her third cigarette in ten minutes with Daniel in her lap. And she’s looking at Adam like he’s the one who shouldn’t be here.

“If anyone’s white trash here, it’s him,” she says and points to Adam with her smoking hand. Her face is sort of scrunched up, like it always is when she’s like this. “Look at him. Even Larry looks less retarded, the fucking little asshole… fucking little… think he’s so much better than us if he just blows his principal and just fucks off from… fucking great. You wanna fucking medal? Shit…”

Lawrence tries not to listen, turns away. Blushing. He usually can’t even be bothered to be ashamed; if he got started, he’d never be able to stop. But this. These times. When she can’t even talk right.

He never thought Adam would be able to hear stuff like this without starting a fight. It’s part of the whole punk thing, or something. But Adam just smiles, just so adorable, and cocks his head.

“Your son thinks I’m the hottest shit,” Adam says. “And either way, I’m not going to get judged by someone trying to give a three year old lung cancer.”

Lawrence takes the hint and walks up to mom, picking up Daniel from her lap. She doesn’t make an attempt to keep him there. Lawrence isn’t sure if he’s grateful or offended. She just sits there, staring at Adam. The cloud of smoke doesn’t take the edge off her spite.

Adam barely seems to notice. He’s digging through his pockets, finding a stick of gum he can give Lou.

A few hours later, when the kids are asleep, Lawrence and Adam are sitting in the stairway, so they won’t wake them up, even though it’s too late for that, with mom throwing stuff around the living room. It’s almost as cold here as it is outside, and since there’s a limit to Adam’s generosity, Lawrence is only allowed to borrow one of his gloves.

“Lawrence,” Adam says suddenly. He sounds like he’s wanted to say this the whole night. “You know, this… this won’t fix anything. I’ve had a blast tonight, it’s not that, but when the winter really kicks in… egg cartons won’t do it. You’ll have to…”

“I know,” Lawrence cuts him off.

He tries to sound calm, but even he hears how scared he is of Adam finishing that sentence.

“I know, we’ll need more. But don’t say it didn’t fix anything. They had fun. They rarely do. It made a difference. You made a difference.”

Adam gives him a look. Lawrence can’t see what kind of look it is, because he’s staring blindly in front of him. Eventually, Adam gives up, looks down at the ground, and they’re quiet a bit longer.

“Right,” Adam says then. “I almost forgot. I got something for you.”

Lawrence smiles wearily and breathes warm air into his hands.

“You do realize I don’t got anything for you?”

Adam smiles, too, and takes a small package out of his coat pocket. Wrapped in a newspaper, like he’s tried to make it seem like he didn’t put too much thought into it.

“I know,” he says and places the package into Lawrence’s lap. “Just open the fucking thing, would you?”

Lawrence reluctantly pulls his hands out of his sleeves and starts opening it up. Once he’s unraveled the paper he drops it next to them, and laughs when he sees what Adam bought him.

_Journal of the American Medical Association._

Lawrence smiles stupidly. He’s not sure how he’s expected to react. No one’s given him a gift before.

“Wow…” he finally gets out.

“You’re going to need it,” Adam says with a grin.

Lawrence keeps smiling, more out of shock than anything else, and without talking his eyes from the book.

“Thanks,” he says eventually and looks at Adam. “It… this means a lot, I mean…”

“I can tell,” Adam says. “You deserve it.”

Pause.

“But if you buy me any fucking thing I’ll never talk to you again,” Adam says firmly, and Lawrence laughs again.

“It must be hard for you, being this nice,” he says and puts the book in his pocket.

“You know it,” Adam says. “But don’t worry, I’ll be an asshole again tomorrow.”

“Thank god.”

It’s the first time in his life that Lawrence thinks it’s a shame that Christmas is only once a year.

 

 


	13. Frozen

Lawrence is almost always prepared for winter. As prepared as he can be, at least. He’s never prepared physically, since that kind costs money, but he’s got his mind set. No repression, no denial, just a very real knowledge that he doesn’t like but won’t get away from, like when the bank account is empty and there’s a week until the next welfare pay: _this is going to suck._

It’s kind of funny. Earlier he told Wendy that what he likes the most about hanging out with Adam is that he doesn’t have to think about whether or not he’s going to survive the week. And it feels like he’s earned it after sixteen years of a life that shouldn’t be normal for anyone, which he probably has, since Adam keeps telling him to _chill_ and _learn to delegate_ and that he should fuck his family and just run around hanging with his rich friend.

“Scuse me,” Lawrence says politely. “You got some spare change?”

The bypassing man rummages through his pockets, finding some coins to put in Lawrence’s hand.

“Good luck, kid.”

Lawrence nods.

“Thanks.”

He puts the change in his pocket, it rattles hopefully, and when he’s stood by the sidewalk for another hour, he dares to take it out and count. Almost seven bucks.

Lawrence works the stiff out of his fingers and goes to the tiny, raw cold convenience store where he gets work occasionally. He buys an apple each for himself, Lou and Daniel, tries to get out but turns around and buys one for mom as well. For whenever she gets home. There’s still some kind of love for her left, or maybe it’s just pity.

Then he goes home. Lou is pale and quiet, Daniel’s started coughing, and Lawrence wants to cry and then kill himself, but chooses not to think about it and instead cuts one apple into slices so it’s easier for Daniel to eat. Then he boils tea with honey that he found in the back of the cabinet and is so old that he has to use a knife to scrape some sugary splinters from the rock hard surface at the bottom.

He’s not trying to think of solutions. There is nothing. There’s health insurance that they can’t afford, all those years of tiny heart attacks he got whenever the kids scraped their knees have gathered up into one big death. He knows they’ll charge him just to bring Daniel in to be examined. He doesn’t want to know what it’ll cost to actually get treatment.

He remembers the time he had to bring Lou to the doctor when she had scabies that wouldn’t go away. They got a queue number sitting in the waiting room, it felt important somehow. The doctor was nice. Lou got a lollipop afterwards. But it was Somna free clinic, it was dirty, crowded, the elevator didn’t work, mildew in the corners, and Lawrence had nightmares afterwards about a convenience store with rats luring in the freezers. Hungry eyes staring at him from the shelves of instant coffee.

The dust is under the skin.

xxxxxxxxx

“Will it get warm again soon?” Lou asks quietly that night, when Lawrence has turned on the stove for them to warm their hands on. He doesn’t answer. Lying feels pointless.

Daniel is sick, and Lou is cold. And they are because Lawrence has been busy prancing around with butterflies and unicorns and shit instead of thinking of them, and he _knew_ this winter would get hard, that it wouldn’t be over just because they got a couple of warm days. He could’ve done something instead of taping egg cartons to the wall like a moron.

“Can’t we stay with Adam?” Lou asks and moves closer to him.

Lawrence stares emptily at the burner.

“We’re not going to see Adam any more, Louise,” he says.

He only calls her that when they’re talking serious.

xxxxxxxxx

Of course, the weekend hasn’t even passed before Adam shows up. Absolutely furious, his face is so red that he doesn’t seem to need that goddamn coat he’s so safely snuggled up in.

“Lawrence, what the fuck is your problem?” he hisses and puts a hand on the door, like he expects Lawrence to slam it shut. “Where have you been?”

“Right here,” Lawrence says.

Adam flips his hood down. Lawrence looks at his coat. It’s thick, warm, best possible protection from the snow blowing horizontally outside. Both Lou and Daniel could fit in it at once, and Lawrence supposes he should get jealous, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t know why. Probably for the same reason as he’s not worried about Lou who hasn’t eaten since yesterday, or mad at mom who does what she always does when it gets bad at home, and sets herself up with one of those people who visits her at night.

Or he should be scared. Because his little brother is on his bed wrapped in every blanket they own and barely breathing and can’t even drink the tea that Lawrence tries to push on him and Lawrence can’t even look at him because he knows he’s going to die.

He should feel all those things. But he doesn’t.

“Couldn’t you have stopped by and told me?” Adam goes on. “Fucks sake, I’ve been worried!”

“I’m sorry,” Lawrence says, absolute flat tone.

Adam looks at him. The anger seems to sink away.

“Is everything okay?” he asks, still angrily, just in case.

“Yeah,” Lawrence says.

Adam eyes him over under furrowed brows. Then he tries to see past Lawrence into the apartment, and when he realizes that Lawrence is too tall for that to be a possibility, he grabs his arm and pulls him out into the hallway.

“What’s going on?” Adam says and closes the door behind them. “Tell me what’s going on.”

Lawrence shrugs. Chuckles, exhausted, throwing his hand out against the tiny, sharp snowflakes blowing at the window pane.

“I don’t know if you noticed the weather,” he says, looking Adam in the eye, “but it’s fucking beyond cold. I live… here. And unlike mom, people aren’t thirsty enough for my blowjobs for me to find someplace else to live.”

All the things he’s done for them.

“No one goes outside, so I can’t beg,” he goes on. “I’ve found every goddamn windshield to clean within a five mile radius, I won’t get welfare until two fucking weeks, I’ve worked as much as they’ll let me, no one has shit left, and it’s…”

One goddamn night when he wouldn’t have to worry that they’d starve.

“It’s not that bad for the rest of the year, but now it’s all this shit, _and_ it’s cold! We have no food, no heat, Daniel’s sick and we have no health insurance and no money and we _never have any-fucking-money…”_

He quiets abruptly. There’s a thick lump in his throat, freezing. It’s so cold. It’s always so fucking cold.

Adam hasn’t said a word. He doesn’t say anything now, either, but when his head falls forward and he rests a finger against both eyelids, Adam hesitatingly lifts his hand and puts it on Lawrence’s shoulder. Lawrence appreciates it more than he can put into words, and if he said anything now, he’d start bawling. Adam’s defrosted him, as he does.

He eventually lifts his head. Adam doesn’t move his hand.

“Would you lose respect for me if I started hooking?” he says hoarsely, and Adam laughs.

“Come on,” he says and squeezes Lawrence’s shoulder before putting his hand on the doorknob. “Let’s go inside.”

Lawrence nods, even though he’d gladly leave this part to Adam. He still doesn’t want to have to look at Daniel.

Adam opens the door. The cloud of stuffiness is the only difference between the stairway climate and their apartment.

“Adam!”

Lou’s dead eyes light up when she sees him, and she leaps up from cowering by the kitchen table and runs up to him. Adam picks her up, and Lawrence is so senselessly grateful that she has an adult in her life that’s not himself.

“Your jacket’s so soft!” Lou exclaims and pinches the fabric of his coat.

Adam smiles, clasping his hands behind her back.

“You know what,” he says. “In, like… twenty years, when Lawrence is a big shot doctor, he’ll get you a jacket like this.”

Lawrence blushes, and Lou laughs.

“You promise?”

“And then some,” Adam says and puts her down. “Let’s see…”

He looks around without finding Daniel, turns to Lawrence, who points at the pile of blankets on mom’s bed. Adam walks up to it, pushes the blanket aside, and even though Lawrence is certain that he was prepared for worse, Adam’s face gets a pained expression that he hasn’t seen before.

“Jesus…” he mutters and puts a hand on Daniel’s forehead. “Fuck… okay.”

Adam puts two fingers on Daniel’s pulse. His head has fallen to the side, and it’s like a wave of pain through Lawrence’s chest.

He looks dead.

“God,” Adam says and straightens up, starts buttoning down his coat. “Come on. We’ll take care of this. Lawrence, come on.”

He sloppily wraps Daniel up before he lifts him off the bed. Lawrence tells Lou to get dressed while he does the same. He’s not even worried anymore, everything inside him is tensed up like he’s expecting a punch, the next in a long line that he’s received.

“Can we pick up Wendy on the way?” he asks.

Adam nods.

“Sure. Come on.”

Then he opens the door.

The cold air is like a slap in the face. Lawrence barely reflects on it, and Adam doesn’t seem to either, even though he’s just wearing a tee and hoodie now. Lou is in sneakers that are worn by the toes, and even though he prioritized getting her a new jacket, Lawrence knows she’s cold beyond belief, but she doesn’t say a word. Just puts her tiny hand in his as they walk.

It’s like a pilgrimage. Lawrence will always remember it like that. Adam next to him, with Daniel in his arms. And Lou on the other side, her teeth chattering like in a cartoon, gaze somewhere far off, not complaining at all, just whining to herself when a hard wind knocks against them.

It’s a wonder they don’t get frostbitten. Lawrence feels the cold creeping into his bones, but doesn’t reflect on it. Nor on the looks they get when they pass someone else stupid enough to be out in this weather, two summer dressed teens and the rag doll looking girl with them. Let them look, stare until the fucking eyes pop from their sockets, Lawrence doesn’t feel it. It’s like armor to the wind, that thought. _We’re going to fucking do this._

Lawrence knows where Wendy usually crashes when it’s this cold, so they find her quickly. She’s sitting in an unlocked car left in a tunnel, dumped after a robbery, probably. Even Lawrence’s apathy makes an anxious flip when she steps out of the car. She’s pale as a ghost, arms white and boney like spider legs.

Lawrence gives her a quick hug and the run-over. Wendy just nods, and then looks at Adam. Adam smiles in that way that could make anyone melt, despite gender, orientation or the fact that they’re in a place like this.

“Wendy, I presume?” he says, politely, like she’s important, like he couldn’t wait to run into her in a tunnel in Somna.

“Yeah,” Wendy says and smiles back, it looks out of place on her sunken features.

“Adam. Further instructions can wait.”

Lawrence has no idea how far it is to the hospital. It feels like they’re walking for hours. He doesn’t know if Adam knows either. He’s probably wound up there himself, drunken rumble, a joint with something off about it. Lawrence doesn’t know much about his life. That thought will hurt later.

Adam’s frustration progressively grows. Eventually he hisses something and gets out his phone, is quiet for a bit and then blurts out their position, and hangs up. He looks so annoyed that Lawrence doesn’t want to ask who he called, and he doesn’t get what’s going on until a yellow car creeps up by the sidewalk. Lawrence dares to shoot Adam a glance, which is answered by one so dark that it seems stupid to question him.

“Get in the fucking car,” Adam says dully.

Lawrence obeys immediately. They get in, Adam in the front.

“Get us to a hospital,” Adam says to the man behind the wheel. “We’re in a hurry.”

The man looks at the bundle in his arms. The tiny shoes hanging out of the shadows of the coat.

“If it’s bad… there’s a free clinic…”

“Get us to a _real hospital,”_ Adam hisses. “I can pay for the fucking thing. Just go. And you buckle up when you’re in a car,” he barks at the people in the backseat. “Don’t you have goddamn cars out here?”

Lawrence has never been in a cab before. The closest he’s gotten to riding a car has been when they were younger and he and Wendy snuck aboard the bus to get down to the boardwalk. This car is a totally different ballpark than the ones hacking along the roads at home, sliding quietly across the brown slush on the streets. Nobody says a word, not even the cabbie, who should understandably ask what Adam’s carrying, but not even Lawrence would dare to ask Adam questions the way he looks now. He only sees him at a half-profile, but still sees it. Jaw tight, hands holding Daniel and seem to be frozen in protective stance.

Lawrence wants to say something. That Adam saved him, saved them all. That if Daniel survives it’s because of him. That he’s sorry that Adam has to carry everything that he can’t carry on his own. But Adam won’t be susceptible to that until he knows they’re safe, so he leans his forehead against the window and stays silent until they get there.

The cab pulls up forty or so minutes later. Adam pays, and they get out. Lawrence starts to feel his feet again when he sees the lit sign above the sidewalk, seems to float in the air, it’s the only thing showing through the snow.

It was warm in the car, but when they stumble through the automatic doors of the hospital, it’s like stepping into a warm shower. A nurse hurries up to them, but can’t decide which one of them needs care. Adam hands over the bundle that is Daniel, then he gives Lawrence some bills and tells him to get them food.

When they’ve eaten, a doctor comes up and says that Daniel has double sided pneumonia. It’s treatable with antibiotics. _But –_ he conveniently puts off saying this until the very end – before they start treatment, they’re going to have to see their insurance card. Adam gives him a look that could’ve stopped a train.

“Now’s the part where we say we don’t have insurance and just be _ashamed_ of ourselves, isn’t it?” he hisses and gets his wallet out. “Sorry, dude. They don’t have insurance, but _I_ have money, I have a credit card, I have a fucking _billing address_ if that’s how you want to do things. Could you stop standing around being an ass and just go treat the kid?”

Daniel gets admitted for the night. The doctor asked for payment in advance, but he would’ve treated Daniel anyway. Adam has that effect on people.

Lou falls asleep in Adam’s lap right after eating and Wendy collapses on Lawrence’s shoulder shortly after. Adam and he stay awake for a while, watch people get in, bleeding, fainting, coughing worse than Daniel did. So many more people arriving than leaving.

“Adam?” Lawrence says after a while.

“What?”

“I wish you were my brother.”

Adam smiles inwardly.

“Just cause you’d have my rich ass parents,” he mumbles.

Lawrence smiles, grateful to have someone to ruin any serious moment. He’s got enough of them as it is. Then Adam leans his head against his shoulder and falls asleep, and Lawrence doesn’t feel like crying for the first time in a long time.

That feeling is such luxury to him that he’d gladly spend the rest of his days in the waiting room of Somna State Hospital.

 


	14. Defrost

Daniel wakes up again the next morning. Lawrence has probably never hugged anyone as tight as he does when tiny blue eyes squint at him. Even Adam seems kind of moved.

They get to go home two days later, when Daniel’s been kept under observation and gotten a prescription for penicillin. In the meantime, they hoard food from the cafeteria and Adam tries to teach everyone how to play cards.

Mom is home again when they get back. She asks where they’ve been, which is more engagement than he’d hoped for, but when Lawrence replies that they’ve been to the hospital, she doesn’t ask anything more. That information alone is more reality than she can handle, but he knows she sees the pills he forces Daniel to take with every meal. Or, three times a day.

It gets better after that. Weather wise at least, and they get their welfare. It’s like the world has tested if Lawrence can handle the threat of the absolute worst, and now that he’s proven that he can, it can calm down.

That thought hits Lawrence when he’s outside his house and feels the first signs of spring blow against his face. In that moment, he believes in god.

School starts again. It’s a terrible thing to think, but Lawrence is kind of grateful that Daniel was at the peak of his sickness over the weekend, so the only days he missed was the Friday before, and Monday when Daniel was still admitted. Those are the only days he’s ever going to miss, and with all that’s happened, it feels like he’s been gone a week.

Maybe that’s why that cold weight returns to his belly when he’s outside the gates to the school. The thoughts, voices, _you know how it’ll go when you go in there, you know,_ and he gets terrified, can barely breathe.

The tests go over okay. Most of the time at least, because stress wise, they’re kind of pitiful next to the certainty that your brother’s going to die. Sure, there are times when he just sits there and stares stupidly at a question he knew the answer for ten minutes earlier, or runs to the bathroom and makes weird, gurgling noises but rarely with anything to throw up. But it’s not that often.

“If you don’t calm down, I swear I’ll call your mom,” Mr. Peters says one day when a teacher’s forced Lawrence to a sit down with him to talk about “the situation,” which at least is a flattering term.

Lawrence shakes his head wearily.

“It wouldn’t make a difference.”

Peters rests his pen against his lip, sighs and seems to go through his options. Then he looks at Lawrence, beetle eyes glistening with either concern or annoyance.

“You’re such a good student, Lawrence,” he says slowly. “You’re wrecking your own chances.”

He’s quiet for a bit again. Lawrence isn’t sure if he’s expected to answer.

“If you don’t calm down, maybe I’ll talk to Adam,” he then says, smiling. Which looks way off. “That’ll make a difference, won’t it?”

Lawrence smiles, too.

“He’d force-feed me tranquilizers if he had to.”

Peters laughs loudly, which scares Lawrence half to death. Then he says it’s time to talk about what Lawrence wants to do after school.

The teachers make no effort to change Lawrence’s stress levels after that. They probably notice those less subtle signs, dark circles under his eyes and that undertone of screaming despair when he politely has to ask why he got a B on this assignment.

But he’s so good. It’s hard for a teacher to tell a student to try to be less good.

Lawrence doesn’t want their pity. He doesn’t expect it either. He doesn’t know why he’s just as disappointed every time he exits the classroom without anyone calling him back to have a talk about his life.

Amongst all the angry voices in his head, there’s one who’s never given up, always been there and that he hasn’t sold for food money: _see me!_

It’s the only thing he’s ever asked for. He wants to be seen. Or, _worthy_ of being seen would be enough.

During a geography class, all he inhuman things he forces himself to do are defeated by the very human need to sleep, and he collapses silently into his notebook. After class, the teacher calls him to her desk. She says she’s noticed that he seems exhausted lately, and asks if there’s something he wants to tell her. If there’s something at home affecting his results. Lawrence is terrified of the idea of anything affecting his results, so he says no. Then he goes home and studies nonstop for three hours until Lou pulls his arm and asks if he wants some of a hotdog she manages to beg for at the gas station.

Adam leads an okay life during this semester. That’s the way it tends to be, although he’s slipped a few notches down from okay at several occasions. When Claire gets a hug from their mom, his okay fades, and when he fights with dad, it sinks into complete darkness.

He doesn’t talk about it with Lawrence much. Of course he asks about it when Adam gets to school with new bruises, but Adam brushes it off. If he’d made up a story about a row at his holy junk yard, Lawrence would probably buy it, but Adam doesn’t want to lie to him, and soon he’ll have refused to talk about it so many times that Lawrence will get that something is wrong.

It’s not a problem for Adam personally that he doesn’t feel comfortable talking to Lawrence about this. What bothers him is that it affects Lawrence’s ability to talk to _him_ about stuff. He’s always seen their relationship as a one-way street as far as sharing emotions go, and he never thought Lawrence would want it another way. But it happens more and more that Adam sees that it’s worse than usual, darker marks under Lawrence’s eyes, lunch breaks after a test when he’s pale into his lips, and won’t talk about it. Their usual mix of comfortable silence and Lawrence talking about things that he can’t tell anyone else, has been replaced with hollow words. White marker fading away the second it’s written down.

It annoys Adam immensely.

“Claire got home last night,” he says one night when they’re out walking. “She’d been out with her _squad._ I guess her friends were fucking wasted, so she wasn’t too bad, but… she was drunk. Not out of hand drunk, but drunk.”

Lawrence doesn’t answer. Adam keeps talking, not as nervous as he thought he’d be.

“I’ve gone home drunk,” he goes on, Lawrence chuckles. “I’ve gone home fucking _plastered._ Most of the time, it’s on booze I stole from them. And occasionally I brought home a girl, even though I learned there was no point. Dad always chased her off, so I didn’t get laid anyway. And when I did it, he yelled at me nonstop for twenty minutes before he calmed down.”

Lawrence nods. Adam’s not used to this feeling. Almost relief.

“But when it’s Claire, it just cute. Mom’s like ‘oooh, you drink so responsibly,’ blah blah. And she had the hangover breakfast of the century prepared when she woke up in the morning.”

Lawrence nods again.

“Your sister is disgustingly cool, isn’t she?”

Adam sighs.

“She really is.”

“The kind you hate?”

“That exact kind.”

It doesn’t take more than that. Adam hadn’t let it go that far if he’d known it was that easy to fix.

If all he has to do to fix this is to occasionally _talk_ about stuff, he will. Jesus, he’s done harder stuff than verbalize things.

That goes on through the semester, too. This. Whatever it is.

Their relationship used to be all new and exciting, not to mention terrifying, and then there was that phase where Adam tried to get used to it taking such a huge part of his life. And now it kind of… just is.

They go out every night, or almost every night. They stay in and study to keep Lawrence sane when they don’t. One day Lawrence has a cold, and Adam and Wendy sit by his bedside, they’ve made instant noodles, and even though Lawrence is perfectly capable of eating them by himself, Adam holds the fork to his mouth and tells him that here comes the airplane, and Lou teases Lawrence about it for days afterwards.

It’s insane that anyone can mean this much. At least to Adam. Everything’s been black until now, because that’s what he’s wanted. Black hair, black clothes, black down to the soul, and Lawrence doesn’t light up everything, but he makes it okay, and that’s more than most has managed to do.

Or, what _most._ It’s not like anyone has tried.

Lawrence is so close, closer than he knows. Adam is dangerously close to telling him everything. The first night of the summer break they get drunk, or, Adam gets drunk and Lawrence gets _tipsy,_ and Adam hangs around his neck and tells him he really _likes_ him, and he doesn’t say that because he’s drunk, Lawrence can’t think that. But at least it stays at that. Doesn’t touch him too much, doesn’t get closer than he can handle.

It’s fine that Lawrence knows how much he likes him, and telling him other stuff isn’t that bad either.

Lawrence is his only friend. He’s practically his brother. And that should be enough, it really should. Adam doesn’t want more than that, he can’t afford to ruin what they have. It’s too precious, too great, and he can’t botch it on some stupid impulse.

It’s just that goddamn night.


	15. Stolen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You know when a fic is a slow burn and then it finally becomes a burn burn

Not even the music helps anymore. Adam moans and falls back onto the bed.

His room is so small, he can’t breathe in here. There’s no use going to Lawrence’s, they have a test tomorrow, and Adam probably isn’t the best studying aid right now. And he doesn’t want to go to the junk yard, just the thought of picking up some random girl suddenly makes him sick.

He doesn’t want to go out, but anywhere is better than here. So in lack of something better to do, Adam gets up and goes to the living room. Mom’s on the couch, between Claire and dad.

For a moment, Adam thinks Claire looks unhappy. But it’s not something he dwells on.

He puts his hand in his pocket and takes out a cigarette he bummed from a guy in the street earlier. Just that is enough to make something flicker in dad’s eyes, and when Adam lights it, he gets up. Polite smile, but such cold eyes.

“You can’t smoke in here, Adam.”

The evil genie smiles.

“You’re scared I’m gonna get cancer, dad?” Adam asks, cocking his head and leans against the doorframe.

“I don’t give a damn if you’d die of AIDS or whatever it is you’d get,” dad says, just as sweetly as Adam. “But the smell sets in the wallpaper.”

Adam smiles, even though he’s not very amused, and breathes out a cloud. Tries not to show how the cigarette suddenly makes him feel like he’s rotting inside. Shit, he can’t even have this little pleasure anymore?

“Claire smokes, too,” Adam says and nods towards Claire, who blushes slightly. “You’ve seen her smoke on the porch, and she’s younger than me. Why don’t you care about that? Why don’t you love me as much as her, dad?”

Dad’s in front of him in a heartbeat. He uses his fist this time, the world turns white as Adam’s head pushes back. Blood is salty. Nothing is fulfilled.

“Get out of here, you little faggot.”

Adam drops the cigarette on the carpet. He doesn’t look at his dad, just turns around and goes, slams the door so hard that he hears that stupid little fucking painting in the hall fall down behind him.

The evil genie is happy. It’s better than the option. The problem is that Adam still feels like nothing.

He won’t exist much longer if he doesn’t do something.

xxxxxxxxx

Adam is outside Lawrence’s door half an hour later. He’s so relieved to see him he almost starts crying, even though Lawrence looks like his head’s going to explode if Adam asks him to abandon his textbooks. And even though Lawrence’s expression goes from annoyed to terrified when he sees him.

“Hey,” Adam says, hoping his voice sounds normal. “You want to take a walk?”

“I have to study,” Lawrence says, by reflex. “What the fuck happened to your face?”

“Nothing,” Adam says, and _fucks sake, pull it together._ “Like… please? I really want to be out. I… I can’t be at home right now, man.”

Lawrence rubs his hand against his forehead, glances into the apartment over his shoulder. Then he sighs heavily.

“I’ll get my jacket. But,” he adds when he sees how happy Adam gets, “only if you’ll tell me what the hell’s going on with you. I’m sick of you getting bruises and shit and I’m not allowed to ask what they are.”

Adam feels his heart sink, but nods obediently. He’d probably do anything to get Lawrence to come with him tonight.

“Are they okay?” Adam asks as Lawrence steps out and locks the front door.

“Yeah, it’s fine,” Lawrence says, zipping up his jacket. “It’s a good day. But now, could you tell me what happened?”

Adam grins and starts walking. It’s so weird. Already, it all feels a little easier.

“You never told me when I have to tell you.”

Lawrence stops, giving Adam a look. Adam grabs his arm.

“I’m _gonna_ tell you, okay? But we got to get me cigarettes first, I used up my last one trying to fuck with dad.”

Lawrence exhales through his nose, it’s remarkable how much annoyance he can get into that one noise. Then he starts walking again.

“There’s a convenience store on the corner,” he says, pointing. “Wait.” He stops again. “Is it your dad that’s…”

Adam smiles, even though he feels those fucking tears welling up again.

“After the smokes, Larry.”

They enter the store. The fluorescent lights are humming, floor sticky under their feet. The store clerk is half asleep behind the counter, head in his hand. Adam looks around for the cigarettes, and almost laughs out loud when he sees a pack next to the register, probably the clerk’s own, so it’s probably not full, but the nicotine isn’t that important right now. The evil genie is twisting and growling, and he didn’t bring his wallet, anyway. He turns to Lawrence.

“Wait here,” he mumbles and starts moving. He’s not surprised at all when he feels Lawrence grab his sleeve. He looks terrified.

“What are you doing?” he hisses, and before Adam gets to answer: “Fuck no! I’m going with you.”

“You out of your mind? You’ll fucking flip.”

“Adam,” Lawrence mumbles, pressing every word. “I’m coming with you.”

Adam sighs. To Lawrence, this seems to be about something totally deep and profound rather than Adam being bored and wanting to lift.

“Fine. Come on.”

They slowly approach the checkout, Lawrence is almost stepping on his heels because he’s so nervous. Adam want to say something mean so he’ll get back to the door, but it’s too late. They’re already by the desk, and quick as a snake, Adam grabs the pack and puts it in his pocket. Like it’s no big deal. Lawrence almost gets annoyed.

There’s a completely dead moment after Adam’s taken the cigarettes. Or, it’s been a long time since Lawrence felt this alive, blood rushing in his ears and sweat beading on his palms. They’re invincible. Super heroes. Until they notice that the clerk has woken back up.

“Fuck,” Adam says, in lack of something better, when the zitty twenty-something year old blinks slowly and looks at them, probably too sluggish to get what they’ve done, but can no doubt tell there’s a problem.

Lawrence looks like he’s going to throw up or cry. Adam looks at him and laughs, mostly because it seems like the most painless solution at this point.

“Just go,” he says calmly and slaps Lawrence’s side gently, and that’s all the encouragement Lawrence needs.

He’s never been able to do anything without being told to.

Lawrence starts running, and Adam follows. He’s more or less convinced that the clerk isn’t following them, he’s probably gone back to dozing off, but it doesn’t matter. They run anyway, just cause, and they can’t stay where they are. The only things they have with them are a pack of stolen cigarettes, one set of unpolluted lungs, and each other.

They stop by an intersection. At this point, there’s no doubt that there’s no one following them, but they still look around desperately.

“Where the fuck are we going?” Adam exclaims, and can’t keep but smiling when he sees Lawrence.

Lawrence spins around and eventually points to a poorly tended back alley, squeezed between the buildings down the street.

“That way!” he says firmly and grabs Adam’s arm.

They make a final sprint, stops in the alley, and are finally safe on the tiny surface between a dumpster and a sad flower bed, spooking a cat sitting between the unidentifiable bushes, and bolts shrieking across Adam’s feet.

Adam has no breath left in his body, but still somehow finds the air to laugh. He sits down on the fence by the flower bed, both hands on his knees, gasping for breath, laughing hysterically, pauses for a second, throws his head back and laughs again. Lawrence is giving him the evil eye, or at least trying to. It’d have more weight to it if he hadn’t been out of breath, and more importantly, tried very hard not to laugh himself.

“You fucking moron,” he hisses and punches Adam in the shoulder. “Fucking brat! ‘Well, of course I _could_ afford to put this shit in my lungs, but I’ll still steal the smokes because I need some _excitement_ because I’m so fucking _unique and misunderstood.’”_

That makes Adam laugh even harder. Lawrence just shakes his head, but seems to have great troubles staying serious.

“This isn’t funny!” he explodes, and the fit that sends Adam into finally breaks him. Lawrence leans his elbow against the dumpster, puts his hand over his forehead and starts laughing, too. Can’t stop. It’s been so long.

Adam doesn’t stop, either. They stay like that for a while, with Adam alternating between collapsing with his hands on his knees and snickering silently, and leaning back and laugh so that it echoes through the dark alley. It’s almost more fun to watch than thinking of what they did, so Lawrence just stares at Adam, shakes his head, laughs, for some stupid liberating reason.

Eventually, Adam calms down. Or, he’s not laughing as much, but adrenaline is still pumping, fingers spasming nervously, squeezing the stolen pack in his pocket.

Then he looks at Lawrence.

He gets stuck there. Adam feels alive for the first time in a long time, so maybe it’s the sense of entitlement you get from that.

Maybe it’s the last thing dad told him before he left.

No matter the reason, he doesn’t wait for permission, either from himself or Lawrence, before he stands up and gives him a, in itself pretty innocent, kiss.

Everything else goes away.

Adam looks up at him again, it’s dark, the moonlight makes Lawrence look even paler than usual. His face is a bluish white shadow with shining eyes. Adam manages to think it’s the first time he’s had eye contact with someone before he’s kissed them, then he does it again.

Lawrence doesn’t respond much. At first he recoils, probably from shock. The second and third time he just stands there, but then Adam gets closer, parts his lips, thinking _jesus, we’re actually doing this,_ and Lawrence lifts his arms, that have just been hanging by his sides like dead branches, putting his hands on Adam’s waist, hesitatingly, like he’s not sure he’s allowed.

He doesn’t know why anymore than Adam does. But for the first time in his life, Lawrence isn’t thinking about consequences, or logic, he barely thinks at all. He wants it, he does. He feels it.

Somewhere, beneath denial and fear and a bunch of other stuff that will eventually have to be dealt with, he wants it. It’s already getting harder to pull back just to catch breath, and trivialities like oxygen feels decreasingly important. Adam steps closer, almost standing on his toes, and he tastes like bitter tobacco and absolutely addictive.

Adam’s not sure where he is in all this. His hands wound up on Lawrence’s shoulder, pawing at them like he wants to rip his jacket to get to naked skin, but the little sense he has is starting to surface. This should be so weird. Lawrence is his best friend. Hell, his _only_ friend. Practically his brother. He rarely has to question himself before he does things like this, because everything he’s done has been so pointless, he’s known he’ll never be held accountable for it.

This is the first time it’s ever been important enough to have to think _do I want it, go further, how far_ could _we go._ But it’s also the first time he’s been so goddamn wanton that the longer he stays in it, the more impossible it feels to stop.

Lawrence isn’t a very good kisser. He seems unsure on what to with his hands, they’re stuck on Adam’s hips, but it doesn’t matter, at all. Just the thought that he’s the first Lawrence does this with, and – a moment of complete euphoria – that maybe in the future, Adam will get to be the one who trains him on it, makes it almost unbearable, so huge and close and perfect and frustrating. How can he be too far away when they’re pressed up like this, chest to chest, mouth to mouth, crotch to crotch, Adam on his tippy toes, trying to compensate for those ten inches separating them, still not close enough.

Lawrence was pretty passive at first. He’s not sure how to move, this far out of his comfort zone. But he’s getting back some of his characteristic need for control. His hands have been moving skittishly across Adam’s back, along the hem of his leather jacket, but they’re now sliding underneath, just the worn fabric of his t-shirt separating, pressing him closer.

The cold of Lawrence’s hands, skin on his fingertips rough from abuse in that neurotic chase for perfection, the heat off his body. Adam feels it all more than he has with anyone else, no mist of alcohol or weed or pitch-black hatred numbing, and never before has he done this with someone he cares this much about.

Unfortunately, it’s with that thought that he can’t pretend any longer.

He knows that they can’t do this.

Adam’s done this so many times. And it’s always been so pointless, he hasn’t even had to introduce himself, not even explain that nothing else could happen between them, because they’d both known it was pointless. But he’s going to see Lawrence tomorrow, and, even worse, if he _didn’t_ get to see him, he’d probably die. He’s going to have to deal with the ramifications of this, they can’t pretend like it’s never happened. He can’t ruin them. It’s impossible.

It’s one cold drop landing in the heat of Adam’s belly, and that’s all it takes.

He can’t lose this. He’s stopped trying to deny how important it is to him.

“Lawrence,” Adam says, finally some logic, his mind saying one thing but he can’t pull back completely, mouth searching out his, can’t grasp that he has to stop, that it’s already over. “Lawrence, man, quit it…”

Lawrence hears the despair in his voice, that’s probably how he finds the will power to pull back. His hands still seem to do everything they can to press him as close as possible, and Adam can’t blame him. His hands somehow wound up under Lawrence’s shirt, and despite what he’s about to say, what he has to say, he has a hard time keeping them still.

He hopes he’ll be able to forget the way Lawrence looks at him now. So openly vulnerable, needy, almost hopeful, and Adam feels completely undeserving of that level of trust.

But Lawrence gets it. He always does. And even if he hadn’t, the turned away eyes and the deep blush on Adam’s cheeks would’ve been explanation enough.

The reason why Adam’s dad is hitting him is suddenly abundantly clear.


	16. Leaving As a Loving Thing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey dudes, this chapter goes pretty heavy on the homophobe stuff. Just as a heads up. 
> 
> Your comments are like cigarettes to my tiny Adam soul <3

It’d been a summer night, almost like the one when he and Lawrence went out together for the first time. Adam had been alone then, a skinny and unremarkable boy of thirteen-fourteen-ish. He’d been at his favorite place, with a fire burning in the oil drum and people way older than him tumbling around the car wrecks.

He’d stared blankly into the fire. He hadn’t gone there that many times, didn’t know anyone and hadn’t really seen the magic in this place yet. He was just thinking of leaving, and then he saw a guy standing on the other side of the fire.

Adam doesn’t even remember what that boy looked like anymore. And he knows he knew way before that. But he remembers seeing a face on the other side of the fire, almost disfigured by the trembling hot air, and he remembers that feeling like a warm wave through his chest, downward.

That’s when it became obvious.

xxxxxxxxx

Lawrence has never thought about it. It hasn’t been an option. He hasn’t even considered the possibility that he could be homosexual, not because he’s homophobic, but because in order to have a sexuality you needed to have some kind of experience of it, something to be attracted to, and where the hell would he find that?

All he knows is that the only girls in his life are his teachers, his sister, his mom, and someone who’s basically also his sister. And he knows what happened the only time he saw her naked.

It was fall, about a year before he started school. The water stopped working in the apartment, and they all got dirty on a downright unhealthy level. Wendy found an abandoned parking garage a few blocks down, where they had a hose to clean the cars. They went in, undressed and hosed each other down. It was blisteringly cold, Lou and Daniel had cried until it echoed between concrete walls.

Lawrence still remembers the moment when Wendy stripped out of her filthy tee. They probably wouldn’t be able to undress in front of each other if they hadn’t had such a completely platonic relationship, and it’d never been more obvious than it was right then.

He remembers the goose bumps rising on her skin in the cold and the yellow glow from the dirty lights. Hair parting for her neck when she bent forward.

He remembers how she’d been the most beautiful thing in the world then, her naked body had been a symbol of divinity and freedom and cutting classes and a world where he got to think of beautiful things, something that was for _him,_ not anyone else. She’d been a symbol of all that, but not of sex. He couldn’t think of her that way, and he didn’t even feel like he had to try.

It’s always like that. Still. He sees the girls in their little skirts outside the gates of the schoolyard, and he’s read enough medical texts to know what happens to the body when boys hit his age. He’s seen what these urges drive mom to, even though he kind of knows that her version of sex isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. He knows that his only ambition in life should be to make girls laugh or cry or moan or whatever, but it’s not. He’s never asked himself why.

Feeling sexual impulses has never been an option. Being gay has been even less of one.

Not because he’s homophobic. But because Adam means too much. Because sex scares him. Because he doesn’t have the time.

He’s read somewhere that sex burns almost ninety-eight calories per half hour. That’s a lot, considering how little he eats.

And he hasn’t even calculated the time it would take from his schoolwork.

xxxxxxxxx

The smoke from Adam’s stolen cigarette slithers through the air. He watches it, in lack of better things to do. He’s sitting on the asphalt now, leaned against the strip of brick wall between the flowerbed and the dumpster. Lawrence is sitting on the fence, biting his nails, just a foot away, feels like a mile. He’s not looking at Adam.

Adam’s halfway through his story. This is the stage where the words get harder to say, lingers on his tongue. He’s never considered it to be sad, the things he’s telling. It just is. But now he has to see Lawrence’s face as he listens, and then he suddenly feels the pain of it.

“He didn’t say much when I told him,” he says. “He went into his study and slammed the door, and then he came out and sent me to my room so that he and mom could talk about what should be done.”

It wasn’t he who did so, if we’re being picky. Maria had come along with her motherly hand on his shoulder and given some nice excuse to get him out of the room. Like he hadn’t heard what dad said.

_Get him out of here, I can’t look at him right now._

“First they wanted to talk to me about it,” Adam goes on. “Not to say out loud that gays are gross and should either get a bullet to the head or be put in some kind of rehab, oh no. They wanted me to know that they accepted me just the way I was. They just wanted me to make sure that it wasn’t just a phase I was going through. Or, even better, if I’d imagined the whole thing.”

 _Honey, all we’re saying is… boys can be confused at your age, okay? They can start thinking they’re… gay, and eventually they meet a pretty girl and understand how much nicer a_ heterosexual _relationship is, and they change their minds. Okay?_

“I think they just wanted to pretend I’d never said anything,” Adam says. “And I… fuck, I was just a kid, of course I wasn’t about to drag home some dude with eyeliner and a tight shirt. I could tell they didn’t want to talk about it, so I shut up. They probably thought I’d called the whole thing off. And I figured… I thought they weren’t mad anymore, since they didn’t talk about it. So when I was… twelve or something, we were by the dinner table, and I said…”

He quiets and takes a drag of his cigarette, tries to talk through the burning knot in his throat. He played along, he remembers. How badly he wanted to play along.

“I told them I was in love. You’d think that finding someone kinda cute is the same as being in love at that age.” Bitter humor. “And mom was thrilled, she asked what her name was, and I…”

_The china lying shattered along the wall. And I still didn’t get what I’d done that was so wrong._

Another drag. It gives him nothing. And it doesn’t help with the fact that something weird and dark is welling up in his chest, from deep within.

“I guess that’s when he started hitting me.”

He hates the way his voice sounds. Like a frazzled guitar string.

Lawrence looks at him, for the first time since he started talking.

“Why haven’t you told me?”

Adam shrugs.

“You got other things on your plate, I… I don’t know, man.”

“Sure, but… you must’ve felt like shit, and kept it inside all this time. You thought I wouldn’t want to hear? You think I have so many problems of my own that I don’t care that the fucking asshole is hitting you?”

Adam looks away, scratches his arm awkwardly.

“But, like, it’s not like I live in fear or whatever. He doesn’t do it that often.”

“I don’t give a shit if it’s once a goddamn year,” Lawrence hisses, sounding so unlike himself that Adam has to look at him again. “He hits you, Adam. Do you get it? You can’t even…”

He quiets down mid-sentence, stares in front of himself again. Adam’s glad he does. He hates making Lawrence sound like that. He doesn’t even sound angry, he sounds _hurt,_ and this isn’t even really his problem. He sounds like Adam feels when dad strikes him, except Lawrence won’t suppress it and let it out by drinking and getting in trouble.

“You’re doing that thing you didn’t want me to do,” Lawrence says eventually. “You told me I couldn’t start telling myself the stuff mom said to me. Your dad doesn’t even have to hit you anymore, because you don’t think you deserve better anyway. That’s exactly what he wants. You’re doing his job for him.”

Adam stares intently at his knees, pulling them up to his chest. He’s not sure what to say. He knows he wants to say he’s sorry, but that doesn’t feel right either.

He hasn’t wanted to apologize for anything, not one thing he’s done since that day he saw that broken chine in the kitchen. Not for all the nights he’s come home drunk, not for all of mom’s halfhearted attempts of kindness that he’s just slapped away. But he wants to apologize for letting his dad hit him.

He can’t stand the idea of Lawrence sounding like that. Not because of something he’s done.

Adam stays quiet. Lawrence looks at him again. He sees, even though Adam looks away and pretends to scratch his nose.

Adam hears him sigh, and suddenly Lawrence is sitting next to him on the fence, putting a hand on his shoulder and pulls him into him. Adam is seated on the ground, his head his on level with Lawrence’s thigh. He’s not sure what to do, so he halfheartedly leans his head against his leg and wipes his eyes, annoyed.

Moments like these should happen to the sound of dramatic Hollywood music, not a dry eye in the theatre, but Adam can’t feel comfortable with this stuff, even if it’s next to Lawrence. His shoulder is tense under his hand, hands tightly clasped in his lap. But he doesn’t lift his head.

Lawrence feels pain that’s more on his own part than for Adam. Not because he’s sorry for himself, quite the opposite. He wants to punch himself in the face.

He’s the one of the two that shows when he’s suffering. He’s the drama queen, he whines and mopes and Adam just listens. Even now, Lawrence wants to break down just from seeing Adam like this, and he knows that if he would, Adam would drop everything he’s feeling right now and just take care of him. He’s never realized how set in its patterns their relationship is.

Adam doesn’t open up on how he’s feeing. And it feels terrible now, but after all these years of gritting his teeth it’s felt so great, something so completely without counter efforts on his own part, someone not demanding anything in return. He’s been so full of what he’s wanted to say, that once he’s said it, he hasn’t had it in him to ask Adam how he’s feeling, even though he should. Because of course he knows that Adam is unhappy.

Now, Lawrence has to think back of all the times Adam’s come to school with his gaze on the floor, terrified of the cracks in the plaster that keep growing. Every time there were new bruises, and Lawrence has assumed he’s gotten in a fight, because it’s simpler that way, convenient. The spotless image he had of himself is suddenly as filthy as the pieces of fabric they used to insulate the apartment last winter.

_I’m supposed to be his best friend._

Of all the things Lawrence has convinced himself that he’s supposed to be, that’s the most important one.

They stay like that for a while. Adam relaxes eventually, snuggles into the worn fabric of his jeans, Lawrence’s hand slides up to his cheek, and despite the raspy scrapes on his fingertips it feels softer than fresh sheets in that huge bed at home that Adam hates so much.

After god knows how long, Lawrence bends down and kisses Adam on the forehead. Adam makes a face, but still doesn’t manage to ruin the moment. Lawrence looks down at him and smiles.

“Can you promise not to let him hit you again?”

Adam smiles too, looking up.

“And how do you expect that to happen?”

Lawrence shrugs.

“I don’t know. Hit back. Go out when he’s home. You can always come by my place, you know that.”

Adam scoffs, but regrets it the second he does it. He’d love to believe that it’s harder than that to avoid dad, because then he would’ve done it by now. But he doesn’t want Lawrence to think that. It feels like if Lawrence believes something, it’s got to be true. Or, should be true. He’s definitely the more optimistic one.

Then they’re quiet again, until Lawrence takes a deep breath, feels his face heating up and asks the question he’s wanted to ask for a while now.

“So what do we do about… well.”

Adam looks up at him. Doesn’t answer at once.

“I don’t know,” he says thoughtfully and clears his throat. “I… I think it’s better if we just try to forget it.”

“Seriously?”

Adam makes some kind of laugh-sobbing noise and lifts his head from Lawrence’s thigh. He has to look him in the eye when he says this.

“Or, it’s not like I don’t… or, I don’t know,” with a smile that hurts. “It’s just that I don’t want anything to change, because I…”

All those years before he met him. Just empty.

“I really don’t know how I would… get by… without this thing that… this.”

Lawrence nods, smiles sadly.

“I know. Fucking weird that we even made it this far, isn’t it?”

“Kinda.”

They stay quiet. Lawrence looks at him, a second of almost unbearable pain before he moves his hand to the back of Adam’s head and kisses him again. They don’t manage to get very far this time, but it makes Lawrence think that he’ll carry the warmth he’s feeling now with him, no matter how cold the apartment is when he gets home. And it becomes clear again, this thing between them, what could’ve been so goddamn good. The thing that has to go away now.

When they’ve pulled back, they stay there for a while, until the night gets darker and Adam starts shivering, and then they stand up and go home.

That’s it.

 


	17. So Far Away

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OH GOD IT'S BEEN SO LONG   
> I'm sorry. Stuff happened. And this chapter is really only suffering so

They don’t mention it past that. Adam doesn’t feel the need to. It’s infected enough as it is, even without talking about it. It could’ve been a problem, how he tries so hard to not look at Lawrence’s mouth too often while he talked and that he didn’t feel it all the way down to his balls when he touched him, but eventually it just seems stupid. He wants Lawrence, but jesus, he’s worked through harder shit than that.

He doesn’t dare risk ruining this. And Lawrence… well. It seems like he’d just get distracted. He doesn’t have time for nonsense.

Maybe it would’ve been fine if they’d just talked about it. They tried it once, or, Lawrence did. A week or so after it happened, when Lawrence got sick of Adam getting weird and distant as soon as there wasn’t at least two feet between them.

“What’s your goddamn problem?” he asked angrily when they were out walking and Adam almost got ran over because he took another step away from Lawrence, thus ending up on the side of the road. “I can’t be near you at all because… because of the…”

Adam looked at him, surprised. His first instinct was to lie.

“No, but I know nothing can happen, and it’s not so easy to fucking adjust to that.”

Lawrence is one of the few people he knows to actually appreciate the truth.

Lawrence stopped, looked at him like he wanted more than anything for Adam to take that back. When he didn’t, something in Lawrence’s face slammed shut, then he nodded curtly and they kept walking, with that safe distance between them.

Just like Adam wanted. Being honest paid off this time, too. But it didn’t feel like it. It felt like a great void getting a little bigger, and he was sure that’s what it felt like to Lawrence, too, but he adjusted. For Adam, and because there were no sacrifices he wouldn’t make for another person.

That’s a part of Lawrence that Adam hates intently. He’s so fucking perfect. He makes Adam feel dirtier than the junkyard where he spends all the more time in the summer.

That’s probably why he makes sure to have more backseat sex than he’d personally prefer during the following months. That makes him feel dirty, too, but he prefers to get that feeling from a scrawny fifteen year-old closet case.

They start their junior year without the only thing that made sense during the freshman one.

There’s no better way to put it than just that it gets worse every day. Adam goes to bed every night with the feeling that it must’ve sunken further into the floor during the day. Why else would getting up get more difficult every morning?

And how can he, who’s such a pessimist that it’s downright ridiculous, somehow always manage to convince himself not even of the hope, but of the _conviction_ that when he sees Lawrence today, it’ll have gone back to normal. He’ll be able to like him the right way, Lawrence will talk to him about important stuff because he trusts him, Adam’s important to him, he just might be kind of loved. But then he gets back to school, sees Lawrence’s pale, pin-stripe thin lips, gaze fluttering across the pages of the textbooks, and remembers that no, today’s no different from the last couple of months. From how it’ll be from now on.

Of course he can tell that Lawrence is hurting. Adam can get through anything, he gets by on nothing but an ability to shut his heart down, both to stuff he doesn’t want there and the things he probably needs. Lawrence can’t, and what he’s trying to get through is killing him. Adam sees the marks under his eyes, the nervousness, the nail biting. Exiting the school bathrooms with a shiny upper lip.

Adam hates it. Knowing what’s happening, and not being able to do anything. He can’t force Lawrence to calm down. And it’s not like he wants him to lower his ambitions, Adam wants him to get out of here as much as he does.

But it’d also be nice if he could eat without throwing up.

Somewhere around mid-semester, Adam realizes that Lawrence has definitely developed something chronic and… not good. He’s in a constant terrible mood, hissing at Adam over nothing, which doesn’t help with the ever-present frustration smoldering in the void. He’ll be so hungry that his stomach can be heard from across the classroom, but when lunch break arrives, he’ll eat as if his life depends on it (which it probably does) for a few bites, and spends the rest of their break pushing food around on his plate. Like the few bites filled up that achingly empty stomach.

It’s that, or he’ll eat his whole portion in thirty seconds and then purge it. Always that goddamn throwing up.

Adam has to drag Lawrence to a doctor, but at least he gets him there. They’re told that Lawrence has gastritis. Adam doesn’t know what that is, but of course Lawrence does. It’s something about stomach acid and stress. Lawrence gets pills, but the doctor tells him that the only thing that can cure him long term is a drastic change in lifestyle.

Talk about preaching to the choir. But Adam keeps buying the pills, and Lawrence doesn’t throw up at much for the rest of the semester. Getting him to fucking chill would be the next step, but it doesn’t look too bright on that point.

It takes Adam some time to get that it really doesn’t have anything to do with school.

One night, they’re at his place. Lawrence is pretty relaxed, because it’s the weekend, and they don’t have anything due for Monday, and Adam’s just happy that they manage to have normal conversations, gone the whole day without any breakdowns or fights over nothing. Lawrence’s made coffee, and they’ve gotten stuck in a crossword puzzle in the open magazine on the kitchen table. It’s nice. Lawrence can even lean on his shoulder, helping him, without Adam having an abundance of annoying sex fantasies.

He rarely feels like he can like being near Lawrence just to be near him.

Adam takes a sip of his coffee and cringes. Thus ruining everything.

“Ugh.”

Lawrence, who’s been half asleep on his shoulder, straightens up.

“It’s gross?”

“Yeah,” Adam says, smiling, looking into his cup. “Three scoops, Lawrence, ever heard of that?”

Lawrence lowers his gaze. Adam still sees it settling, that insight sinking in, deep and cold. _I’m not good at making coffee._

He immediately regrets not downing the entire cup, no matter how gross it was.

“I’m sorry,” Lawrence says, raking his hand through his hair. “It’s… mom usually makes it. I’m not very good at it.”

“It’s fine,” Adam says. As distant as he can, since what he really wants is to hug Lawrence until he chokes.

Lawrence nods, smiling nervously. But he doesn’t look up.

“Lawrence,” Adam says, leaning down to catch his eye. “I swear it’s fine. I can live without this one cup.”

Why is he talking about coffee? Why is he even bringing it up when he knows that’s not what it’s about? Why doesn’t he wrap his arms around his neck and whispers again and again, you’re not worthless, you’re the reason I go on, no matter how much of a pain you are, you have absolutely no reason to hate yourself and even if you were so bad that no other person on earth could stand you I’ll still love you, I will, always, I promise.

He doesn’t. It’s not that simple, it hasn’t been since one goddamn night squeezed in next to a dumpster.

It has nothing to do with school. That look of sincere discontent when he gets that rare B. The good days that are never quite as many as the bad ones. He sinks a little lower every day, never gets up to that previous level.

Adam tries to be a good friend. And sometimes he gets sick of it and fucks girls in the back of a car wreck. They’re less work.

Adam has a void to fill, too. It’d been one thing if he walked around in that complete apathy he dragged around every day before he met Lawrence, because he didn’t know anything else then. Now he was fine, just a few months, but maybe that’s all he gets. Will ever get.

He tries. He really does. And it’s not like Lawrence doesn’t care, they bring up Adam’s problems almost as often as they do his. The reason Adam wants him to shut up every time he opens his mouth is that no matter what Lawrence says, he can connect it to love, or sex, or cigarettes, or dumpsters. Because he wants to be a good friend. Because he wants to be more than that.

He’s probably not a very good friend. He can’t really listen to Lawrence, can only really find him annoying.

The evil genie laughs.

Getting into fights is an easier way to deal with these emotions than talking them through. It’s what he usually did before they met, and clearly it still works. Adam really prefers verbal confrontation, because he knows he’s good at it, and in a physical fight, most of the idiots calling him emo fag can take him down in ten seconds flat. But it turns out, if you’re pissed off enough, that doesn’t matter.

The only things that matter are fists, nose bleeds. The slurs being called at his back that should feed the genie, but that are now just feeding his hatred. The demons under his bed don’t give him the energy to get up in the morning, they just whisper all the things he’s ashamed of when he can’t sleep.

During an evening stroll, after Lawrence has put suture tape over Adam’s busted eyebrow, they sit down by their docks, looking at the leaves in the water. Eventually, Lawrence turns to him.

“Adam, you have to start studying.”

Adam rolls his eyes.

“I know.”

“I mean it,” Lawrence says. “You won’t get out if you don’t.”

Adam doesn’t reply. Lawrence wasn’t counting on it.

“It’s not like you’re not smart,” he goes on. “You’d be great at it if you just made an effort. You’d be… I know what you’re like, but aren’t you working against the system _more_ if you get away from it, rather than living off its welfare?”

That’s the first time since they started going out together that they part without Adam saying goodbye.

He doesn’t start studying after that. And he talks to Lawrence even less.

The most important part is that Lawrence doesn’t notice the bruises. They keep showing up, though not as often. He’s gotten better at staying on dad’s good side, but the only way to do that is to submit. He has to adapt to a system he’s worked against his whole life. It’s a bitterness that burns like cigarette ash.

Instead of smoking in front of his father, he tries to make himself invisible. Doesn’t answer when dad politely asks if he’s gotten AIDS again this week. Neither when he’s sitting by that fucking dinner table, the place where he’s spent his childhood being convinced of what he is, feeling those light, poisonous comments raining down on him, his bent head. Like an executioner’s axe over his exposed neck.

Mom doesn’t say anything. Claire defends him most of the time, but her strong will dies, just like everything else. There are limits to how many times you have it in you to defend someone. Especially if all you get in return is spite.

One night, Adam enters the kitchen to get the food mom put aside for him. They’ve had guests over, so he’s stayed in his room. Claire is leaning against the counter, staring emptily in front of her. The glow from the streetlight breaks through the whiskey glass in her hand. Her makeup is smeared, but in a different way than it does when she’s been out for the night and gets home with musty clothes and tangled hair.

She doesn’t even look at Adam as he walks in. Adam takes his plate from the fridge. Tries to think that if she doesn’t want to talk to him, fine.

They’re quiet as the plate spins in the microwave. Adam says nothing, Claire says nothing, still not looking at him.

“Buy Lancôme waterproof mascara. It sticks better.

He has no idea why he says that. Claire jerks her head towards him, her eyes slits, hatefully black in a way he’s never seen them.

Claire almost looks like him. That thought is like a stab through his conscience.

“Why don’t you go listen to your Billy fucking Talent?” she spits out in a completely joyless laugh.

It’s so unexpected that Adam can’t even think of a good comeback. Just stand there until the microwave beeps, and drags his feet out the kitchen, plate in hand.

Adam and Lawrence go through junior year without anything to believe in. Not the future, not the present. Not their families, school, society. Not music.

That’s what they used to have each other for. They’re still conjoined. Them against the world. But more like it just turned out that way because they don’t have anything else.

They still go out every night. They have to, it’s never been up for discussion. Adam usually ends up looking at Lawrence, trying to find something, _something_ to show that they still belong together.

He finds tons of that. But he’s not sure if that’s enough to make it worth it.


	18. Fine

But then they’re out walking one night, as usual, when summer is drawing to a close. They’re about to start their senior year, after spending the break trying to find their way back to each other. Adam knows that starting again scares the hell out of Lawrence, but they haven’t talked about it as much as he would’ve liked.

The way things are between them, maybe he’s not allowed to ask things like this, and that thought hurts a bit. So he takes a drag from his smoke and asks:

“You nervous about starting?”

Lawrence smiles wearily. That alone is such a nice change that he feels something loosening up inside; it’s not far off that he’d just shoot Adam a sour glance and say something snarky.

“Not really,” Lawrence says. “Not for me, anyway. It’ll hit me in a week or so, but I’ve been more worried about you.”

Maybe it’s just the fact that he’s kept down all the food he’s had today. That they just have the one test this week. That Adam’s dad’s out of town.

Adam grins.

“Thanks a fucking lot.”

Lawrence chuckles, but quickly turns serious. Okay, so it’s one of those talks.

“It’s our senior year. You know I love your little punkscapades, but… it’s not exactly a future. And you _are_ smart. Studying now won’t be half as hard as going back to school when you’re thirty.”

He’s really saying the same things now as he did that time before. When everything that was broken got even more ruined. Lawrence almost expects Adam to get just as pissed this time, since he knows that despite what Adam likes to act as, this year has been hell for him, too. And he wants Lawrence to support him, not sound like The Rest.

But Adam just smiles. Kind of shy, almost like he’s ashamed of what he’s about to say.

“I know,” he says, meaning it this time.

He laughs out loud when he sees the way Lawrence looks at him. It loosens up further.

“I know,” he says again. “I won’t be a tight-ass about it like you, but like hell I’ll get back to that place after this year. I’m going to pass, and I expect you to help me study. But I won’t go to college unless I have to. I have a plan.”

Lawrence raises his brows, and Adam laughs again. He feels all giddy now that he’s telling someone about this. Like it’s really happening.

“You have a _plan?”_ Lawrence says, like he expects Adam to crack up over him falling for it. “Come on…”

Adam shakes his head and takes another drag.

“It’ll rock,” he says and ashes on the ground. “I’ll just get a startup loan from my parents, buy some stuff and get going.”

Lawrence smiles and rakes his hand through his hair. He tries to look disbelieving, but they both know he’s not good at not believing in Adam.

“How do you know it’ll work?”

“I don’t.”

They smile at each other again, and it breaks off completely, falls away. It’s so easy to fix it when they fuck up, how could they let it go this far?

“What do you need to buy?”

Adam just throws it out, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, which it almost is to him by now.

“A camera.”

xxxxxxxxx

Summer has been fine. It hasn’t been one long therapy session in any way, they’ve just tried to work through it. They still have to be together, that’s not up for discussion. Adam has been at Lawrence’s place just as often as he used to, played with Lou, gone on walks with Lawrence and Wendy to buy milk or shampoo or something else that Lawrence would rather work himself half to death over rather than ask Adam for money for.

Lawrence has been fine, too. Junior year is when teachers start nagging about SATs and college, and it’s taken effect with both of them. Lawrence has started looking up what schools will be available after high school. He’s still not sure if it makes him hopeful or sick with fear, but it needs to be done.

The scariest part is that there are very few good universities left in the US. No matter how good Lawrence is at accepting terrible unavoidable circumstances, he usually clicks away the websites of schools that seem amazing, everything he’s ever worked for, if they’re located in Canada.

Aside from that, it’s all fine.

Adam’s not totally cool about that. He wants more than okay for Lawrence. No way he’ll let some fooling around knock Lawrence down to “fine” after a whole year of a life worth living. Especially not when he knows what the only thing Lawrence needs to feel good is.

It’s so dumb. Adam realizes now that some time has passed, when it’s almost like that night never happened. That it had to be this way. It still hurts, he still can’t look at Lawrence without that hot jolt running through him. But that’s nothing compared to how it feels to walk with him two feet away.

It’s not supposed to be that way. There’s no use pretending. Adam will gladly take the heightened need for masturbation if that’s what it takes to walk right next to him again.

Adam has been fine, too. Home is hell, and most of the time, he just has to fold to dad, he doesn’t even risk staring daggers at him anymore. But no matter how hard he tries, he can’t totally shut it out when the guidance councilors talks in classes about how hard it is to get into college now days. He knows on some level that he won’t be able to steal money from his folks for the rest of his life. And hanging around on his sacred junkyard is fun, but not exactly a longstanding project.

It’s weird suddenly thinking about something other than feeding the evil genie. Suddenly, he’s more important himself. The genie has no future, it hasn’t matured since the china was shattered in the kitchen and it settled down in his chest. Adam has something. Maybe. It’s worth a shot.

He has the code to his mom’s bank account. When he’s low on cash, or his best friend’s little brother is dying, Adam usually transfers money to himself. Mom’s noticed that he does that long ago, but she’s never mentioned it. Adam is never going to do it again after this time, he promises himself that, but this time, he wires nine-hundred bucks to himself, finds an add on eBay, and buys it. His camera.

He’s not sure what it is, but it makes sense somehow. When he gets the camera, it becomes even more obvious that he’s always seen life through still frames, single moments that could’ve been so beautiful if he’d been able to capture them. And now he can. Because he’s got a _camera._

By the time school starts, Adam’s taken more pictures than he can fit into his room without dad noticing. Not that he spends a lot of time there, but when new folders are turning up on his desk, later developing to a huge box under the bed, his gaze gets even harsher, comments even dryer, but Adam doesn’t care.

He’s learned not to answer his father, no matter what he says, whatever devastating comeback he thinks of. But he can’t get rid of that thought, because it’s as much from himself as from the evil genie. _One of these fucking days, dad…_

He’s not happy. But he’s found something he didn’t know he had in him. Or, he knew it was there, but why would he spend time on it if life were pointless?

As some sort of emphasis of the reason to why he finally dared to start taking pictures, Lawrence is in most of them. Lawrence is also more than happy to sit next to him after he’s developed the pictures and discuss which ones should be thrown out, which ones are good enough to keep and which are good enough to go into The Folder.

The Folder is actually Adam’s portfolio, but he doesn’t like calling it that. He pretends not to hear it when Lawrence tells him how great he is at this. Even though Adam was the one who brought up the idea that he’d be a photographer, it sounds too big. Like… being a photographer? As an _occupation?_ As if.

About a week after they go back to school, Adam sees a job ad in the paper. He sends them some pictures and gets called in for an interview. He can’t go there on his own, but tries holding on to some kind of independence by forcing Lawrence to wait outside while he goes into the _office_ and talks to the _staff manager._

Adam answers very politely to the questions, only curses once, and it results in a rumbling fit of laughter from the other side of the desk. When he comes out, Adam looks like he’s seen death up close, and Lawrence drags him to a nearby diner to get him a “calm down” coffee.

They call him a week later. Adam has a _job_ now, contract and all. He gets commission on every picture he takes for them. It’s so weird, but makes perfect sense. Lawrence thinks so, too.

Lawrence’s way of dealing with school starts to show its downsides. He has days when he’s fine, and other days when Adam sleeps over and wakes up from him twisting in sleep, whining like a scared dog, and Adam can never get him to explain why. He’s not sure if they’re woken hallucinations, or nightmares, or just the demands of the future.

“I can’t help if I don’t know what it is,” Adam says softly. Lawrence is sitting across from him, mussed, pale, not really there. His gaze is flickering, not settling down, and he doesn’t even seem to notice that he’s biting his nails.

 _“I_ don’t know what it is, man,” Lawrence mutters. He has no nails left to bite, he’s mercilessly chewing soft flesh, scraping blood from his fingertips.

“No, but can you describe it? And fuck off from your nails.”

Lawrence reluctantly lowers his hand and bites his lip, instead. And he still barely seems aware that Adam asked him a question. Eventually, Adam sighs, hanging his head. Lou turns in the crib across the room.

“You know what I hate?” he then says. “The whole Somna deal. You remember before they built all the inner city streets together? Your kind stayed away from mine.”

Lawrence smiles, though without stop chewing on his lip.

“It must’ve been awesome for you better people.”

“It was,” Adam says. “Things were much better. If we’d met back then, it would’ve taken me much longer to get to your place, and I probably wouldn’t have slept here as often. And thusly get some nights off from your fucking whining.”

Lawrence nods compassionately.

“I’m sorry.”

Adam smiles.

“You don’t have to apologize for being poor, but can you at least be sorry that there are so many of you? Can’t me and my privileges get some space without you having all those working class panic attacks?”

Lawrence’s bleeding hand lies between them on the bed.

He drags Lawrence to another doctor a few days later. There has to be other pills, aside from the ones he get for his stomach. So he can sleep, because otherwise he can’t study, and that’ll end the world, as we all know. But as it turns out, doctors don’t prescribe sedatives to minors without parental approval. Not if their life depended on it. Or someone else’s.

Hopelessness is a package deal when you’re friends with Lawrence. He won’t calm down until he’s done with school, and probably not then either, but Adam can’t help but trying to get him to stop. Lawrence swears he’s enough just by being there, and he works just as hard on trying to fix Adam.

Adam’s broken, just as broken. Even though the ones who destroyed him are real people, and Lawrence’s are the nonexistent ones that don’t let him sleep.

Adam still doesn’t know which ones of them are the easiest to overcome. He just hopes that once they get to the _future_ that’s supposed to be on the other side of all this shit, the ones who broke them won’t be there, waiting.

 


	19. Soaked to the Bone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello babes. Just a heads up; I know Adam's dad has been an asshole basically throughout, but this chapter goes a bit further with the physical part of his abuse. You've been warned.

It’s September. School’s up and running. Adam’s powerfully motivated, probably because they’ve only had one proper test thus far. With Lawrence’s assistance, he managed to get a D, and for some reason, he thought someone at home would be happy for him.

When he brought his graded test home, Adam’s face was flushed with stupid, childish pride, and mom was actually happy, too. He saw a smile starting to form before dad opened his mouth.

“You want a medal or something?”

That was it.

Right then, when both his and mom’s smiles fell to the ground like shot-down birds, Adam asked himself what the hell he’d expected. But that was for a split second, before that thought came back, for the millionth time: _one of these fucking days, dad…_

It’s not even the genie. It’s his own constant humiliation.

It’s September. Adam’s saved almost every penny from his _paycheck_ that he gets from his _job_ ever since Lawrence helped him set up a budget. He gets to spend 20 bucks a month on cigarettes, 30 on other stuff, but the rest goes into savings, and that’s important, because that’s the money that’s supposed to get him out of here.

It’s almost as important to Lawrence as it is to Adam. Because the nights when he wakes up all wound up and sweaty get more frequent, almost common at this point, circles under his eyes even darker. He’s not as sure as he used to be that he’ll manage to get away.

“We can split it,” Adam says when they’re out walking, but has to take a break. Lawrence can’t stand up. “My pay, I mean. It makes sense. I have a job, and you don’t. And you got the kids.”

“Cut it out,” Lawrence snaps.

They let it go.

Adam starts his days now by looking online for places to rent. It’s his new morning ritual, since he got his budget. It’s very rarely a satisfying replacement for a morning smoke, but today, he almost chokes on his coffee like in a cartoon and jolts upright in his seat. He’s not sure if it’s from joy, fear, shock.

A studio by the Boulevard. Kitchenette, close to a grocery store. Not too far from his _workplace,_ and pretty close to the subway, meaning close to Lawrence.

There’s no guarantee in this. No self-respecting person would rent even a studio to an eighteen year-old with no solid income. And yet, Adam’s hands are trembling as he bookmarks the ad and opens his mail server to write to the landlord.

Maria walks in and starts taking care of the dishes. Adam’s sitting with his hand tightly clasped on the table and staring at nothing, and she doesn’t ask what’s going on with him. She probably just thinks he’s angry, as usual.

“I might move out of here soon,” Adam says, looking at her.

She straightens up, plates still in hand. Looking only a little surprised.

“Well, that’s about time,” she says after a brief pause, and goes back to loading the dishwasher.

“Yeah,” Adam says and stands up. “Are you going to miss me really, really, really much?”

Maria laughs so loudly she almost drops the silverware she’s holding.

“No, I really won’t,” she says. “You’ve been a whiny, ungrateful little brat since you hit puberty.”

“But I’ve had a fair reason to be, right?”

“Definitely. And I like you a lot, and I hope you’ll be better off wherever it is you’re going.”

Adam laughs, too.

“You’re probably the one I like the most in this house. That’s why I’ve been such a pain in the ass, obviously.”

Maria smiles, wiping her hands on her apron. She’s only nine years older than him. Looks so much more withered than that.

“If I’d had a maid when I were a kid, I would’ve hated her, too,” she says. “It’s nuts, really, me running about around here, primping up your poor mama. But some version of that is going to be there no matter where you go, so you might as well stop bitching about it.”

“I like bitching.”

“Keep at it, then. As long as I don’t have to hear it.”

In a way, Adam would much rather stay here. No matter how much he hates it. When she’s here, he knows that when dad starts throwing things, someone with soft hands are there to lead him to his room.

He doesn’t know what’s out there. But then he remembers Lawrence’s hands, gnawed up and scratchy, and feels calmer at the same as a void opens up in his stomach.

xxxxxxxxx

Adam and Lawrence go to see the apartment. The landlord looks at them like he knows they’re about to trash the stairway and tries to think of polite way to prematurely send them away. Lawrence usually tries to save his one respectable outfit for school, but he’s wearing it now, so at least one of them looks like a responsible young man. Other applicants are walking around with very limited interest, and Adam can’t blame it. There are two tiny windows, the floor is trampled up, there’s a path worn in between the kitchenette and the couch. The walls are grayish-white, and there’s a vent hood in the corner that snakes would’ve crawled out of if it’d been a horror movie.

But from their reference level, it’s a paradise. Adam and Lawrence run around like jacked up kindergarteners on the tiny surface they got, and Adam tries to come to terms with the fact that it probably won’t pay off. There’s no use raising his expectations. He’ll get more chances. Is what he tries to tell himself.

When he hasn’t heard from the landlord in a while, Adam calls and asks if he’s rented it yet. The landlord says no. Adam says he’s prepared to give him the first three months’ rent upfront, without any idea on how he’ll do that.

The phone is silent for a bit. Then the landlord says he needs a day to think about it. About a week later, Adam is standing outside Lawrence’s front door and wants to tell him right away, but he’s been running the last mile to get here, so he has to stand there, wheezing from his smoke-damaged lungs, before he can get any actual words out.

The best thing about the apartment, aside from the fact that it’s _his_ now, is that it’s immediate access. Adam can move in next month. Technically he still can’t afford to pay what he promised, so he asks mom for money, and gets it, probably straight out of dad’s account.

Dad knows this. But two thousand bucks is a pretty low price to get rid of that constant pain that lives in his house for some reason. That little triangle of dirt that never goes away, no matter how hard the windshield wipers screech against the glass.

He hasn’t said any of this out loud. But Adam doesn’t know how else to interpret his silence. He’s barely addressed Adam since he told them he’s moving. While mom’s hugged and kissed him more in the past week than in the past year, dad’s been in the background, arms crossed, cold eyes pinning him down.

Adam hates how his eyes look so much like his own.

It’s October. Adam packs the last of his stuff into his backpack, the things he knows he’ll want the first night, when he’ll be too lazy to unpack. It’s kind of painful having to start a new life as far away from the old one as he can, and still have to bring most of his shit, but like hell he’ll put the last few dollars to his name on new furniture. Even though his current bed is going to take up almost half of the apartment.

Adam straightens up and looks at the boxes. They aren’t that many. Most of them are for his books, one for his pictures. Clothes, two boxes. Speakers, computer and camera, wrapped in more bubble wrap than what should be able to exist in the world. He’ll use the rest of his money this month for food and _kitchen utensils,_ as Lawrence calls them, but that’s for tomorrow. He’s rented a truck, Maria promised to drive him.

Shit. He’s organized.

The boxes contain his life. It wasn’t that hard to dismantle. And outside the window he’ll never have to look through again, it starts to rain.

“You all packed?”

Adam flinches and turns around. Dad is in the doorway, as solid control of his facial features as usual, lips a thin line.

The fact alone that his dad entered a room without demanding immediate attention should worry Adam. But he’s so happy about his fresh start that he’s not even mad at him right now.

He’ll regret this later.

“Yup,” Adam says and beckons to the boxes behind him. “The car’s outside, I just have to get it downstairs.”

Dad nods. He looks pale. But again, Adam won’t notice this until afterwards.

“You’re really moving?” Clipped tone.

His voice is usually smooth as silk when he talks to Adam, unless they’re fighting. Adam feels his smile stiffen.

“That’s the plan,” he says, trying to sound like he’s joking.

Curt nod. Adam gets a chilling sensation in his gut. Now. When it’s already too late.

“You’re not going anywhere.”

He puts it so simply, just stating a fact. Adam takes a subconscious step back.

“I’m moving, dad. I paid the first rent. I’m moving.”

“You’re not,” dad says and takes a step towards him.

Adam backs further, not subconscious at all anymore. He swallows and tries to smile, even though he feels a minor apocalypse settling in his heart.

“Why don’t you want me to leave?” he says, even though what he’s saying is suddenly so real to him that not even the genie can be happy about it. “You’ve fucking hated me since I came out, you’ve wanted me gone for six years, and now I’m going! You should be happy!”

His father’s eyes don’t look at all like his own anymore. They’re black like a snake’s, and Adam’s eyes look the way they do when you’ve just realized you’re basically as unloved as a person can get.

“I told you to _stay here!”_

It explodes, and now, when it’s too late, Adam realizes that his dad would rather have him dead than somewhere where he can’t be controlled. And he doesn’t love him. He never will.

He ducks from the first hit and tries to get away, even though the insight that struck him has made him numb, it’s like running in water, and dad catches him anyway. He always does.

No one’s loved him. No one’s loved him for six years. Because of something he can’t control anymore than they can.

Dad grabs his upper arm, spins him around, the fist hitting his face feels like it’s made of steel. Adam manages to stay on his feet, but then it strikes him again, and he falls to his knees without noticing. He’s pulled to his feet again only to get kneed in the stomach, and then he hits the ground, lifeless like a doll, breathing in dust from a home that doesn’t want him and the person that’s supposed to be his father presses his head to the floor.

“Get off!” Adam gurgles and tries to kick him off, but dad’s knee is on his back and he can’t move. He feels dad’s watch against the back of his neck as he grabs his hair. Adam will remember that detail for as long as he lives.

Fingers in his hair. Snaps his head back.

No one’s loved him. No one’s loved him. Not in this house.

Dad presses his face into the carpet again. Adam feels his nose bend and creek disturbingly, and he screams, like a wounded animal, like an evil ghoul that doesn’t do anything except sitting in the attic of rich families and scare the cute little children.

That’s what he is.

A lonely little ghost going from door to door, knocking without anyone answering, because no one, _no one_ wants him.

“Dad! What the fuck!”

Adam can’t see her, and he doesn’t want to. He knows that Claire and mom are standing in the doorway, and he knows that mom’s been there for a while but Claire just arrived. He won’t even look at them, because if he saw mom now he would look pleadingly at her, like he needed her, and he won’t ask for her help.

“Dad! Stop!”

The weight falls off his back, and it’s possible that it was Claire that finally managed to push him away, but he won’t stop to look, he gets up right away even though his head is spinning and his heart is blackening, fuck, why does he get up, he keeps getting up even though it’s never been worth it, why can’t he just lay down and die.

The only thing that gets Adam to walk past mom, through the hall and out the door is the thought that if he’s going to die, he sure as shit won’t do it in this house.

He slams the door open without his jacket on, or shoes, with blood dripping in slimy strings from his nose. Adam starts walking through the rain that’s a full-fledged downpour at this point. His already soaked-through socks splash through the puddles on the sidewalk. He walks. He’s just going to keep walking. Away from the enormous lovelessness that’s behind him.

He never felt just how much it hurts.

The guilt of the world. Mom and dad’s little monster.

The evil genie may have loved it, but it’s gone now. He’s all that’s left.

“Adam!”

Adam doesn’t turn around.

“Adam, wait!”

He keeps walking.

“Fucks sake, Adam, I just saved your life, you could at least talk to me!”

Adam stops abruptly and spins around. Claire is in front of him. Her hair is already in thick, wet strands, it looks like worms. The mascara is crumbling under her eyes, she always buys the cheapest possible, and her nipples are pulled tight against the fabric of her shirt. This one has David Bowie on it.

All these flaws. How the _fuck_ is she so beautiful?

“If I’m such a fucking nuisance, why didn’t you let him kill me?” he hisses. “I get that it’ll be sad not to have me as a measuring stick in front of them so you seem even cuter, but you really don’t have to worry, because you’ll always be perfect and I’m…”

He doesn’t want to finish the sentence. Scared of what he would’ve said.

Claire’s eyes narrow and she wraps her arms around herself. Above them, a bolt of lightning rips the sky in two.

“What are you talking about?” She looks back at the house behind them, and before Adam answers, she goes on: “Yeah, they love me more than you. You think I like that? I’ve busted my ass to make you seem better to them, in case you didn’t notice.”

Adam laughs joylessly.

 _“Bullshit,”_ he spits out and points accusingly at her. “You’ve sat by watching him kick my ass, for six fucking years, and haven’t done shit. Is you occasionally laughing at my jokes what I’m supposed to be grateful for?”

He can’t stop being angry. Even though it’s not her fault.

“Come on,” Claire says. “Dad’s hitting me, too. Not because he didn’t love me, he did it because I tried to talk to him about the way he treated you, okay? Not as often, sure, but… you didn’t care what I did! Should I’ve just kept nagging him when you didn’t give a shit about me anyway?”

She locks Adam’s gaze, and Adam tries to keep being pissed, but it’s hard. His entire view of dad, and Claire, is being shaken, but he picks it back up. He’s going to be angry. That’s the mission.

“That’s not the same,” he says, annoyed. “I didn’t know that.”

Claire’s jaw is tight, lips bit together.

“You knew,” she says, more gravely than he thought her capable.

Adam looks at her. Sees her for what she really is, for the first time in a long time, and he wants to hold her and allow himself to feel sorry for her, but he can’t. Of course he can’t.

The guilt of the world. Mom and dad’s little monster.

“That’s fucking adorable,” he says dully, takes a step closer, lowering his voice. “The cute upper class girl that could’ve had the world, but throws it away to stick up to her idiot faggot brother. Standing ovation. You’re fucking great at that, you know that? You’re such a fucking sweetheart that it’s not even me being an asshole, anyone would look like an asshole next to you! Everyone _knows_ I’m a pig and you’re perfect, you know it, I know it, can’t we just leave it at that?”

Claire just looks at him. It’s possible that her eyes are tearing up, or maybe it’s the rain. She shakes her head slowly.

“No,” she says. _“You_ know that. _You… think_ that. Yeah, right now I think you’re an asshole, and pretty stupid, but aside from that, I don’t give a shit if you’re an asshole, or a punk, or gay, or a fucking smurf. You’re my brother and I love you.”

Adam wants to look away, but he can’t.

He’s never been able to accept other people’s concern. Whether they’re trying to take care of his dishes, or defend him when he’s being abused by his father.

When it comes to love, Adam’s an emotional strainer. Nothing sticks, everything runs through him. He can only keep the bad stuff, the things that stick and chafe at the tiny bit of self-love he’s managed to build up.

Claire looks over her shoulder, towards the house. They’re a few feet away from the front door, and it still feels like a totally different world.

“Wait here,” she says. “I’ll go get a status report. If he’s still being crazy, we should stand back, but otherwise, we’ll get your stuff, and Maria can drive us to the apartment.”

Adam nods. His head is still pounding like a sledgehammer, and his heart is torn open. Not in a bad way. More like a mosquito bite that he’s tried not to scratch, but that he’s now sick of and scratches until blood is trickling between his fingers.

About an hour later, he and Claire are sitting on his bed, in _his apartment._ She nicked the first aid kit from that place that was never his home, and Adam grimaces as she wipes his bottom lip clean and touches his bent nose gently. It’s not broken, the cheekbones took the worst hit. She probably just wants to feel like she’s doing something.

Adam can’t help but think of Lawrence when he sees the sticky, green plastic package lying opened on the bed. Has it really only been little over a year since he was sitting n this bed, staring angrily under his bloody bangs?

He can’t wait to show Lawrence this place, when he’s finally got it set up. Lawrence hasn’t seen his real home, because that place never was. And Lawrence has never met his sister, because Claire couldn’t be when they were living the way they did.

Maybe she never will be able to be. But she gets to clean Adam’s wounds now, that’s got to be some kind of beginning.

“Why do you think he didn’t want me to go?” Adam asks as Claire puts disinfectant on a cotton ball.

She shrugs.

“No idea.”

Maybe they’ll never know. But Adam’s got something in his life now. He’s got Lawrence, maybe Claire. A place he’ll be able to make his home. But when Claire’s left, later that night, the wound’s still open. Something he managed to repress all those years by telling himself he didn’t _want_ to belong.

He thought he didn’t need all those things that other people do. Love, friendship, belonging. But now he’s all alone, and he feels it.

Grief over a family he never had.


	20. Eyes Long Gone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a mention of child rape in this chappie. Lawrence's mom is a gem as always

Adam is sitting with his legs crossed at the head of the bed, smoking with his camera in his lap, appearing completely oblivious to the risk that he’ll set fire to the mattress. Lawrence isn’t sure if it’s because he doesn’t care, or that he just forgot that he’s smoking. The cigarette has been dangling between his lips for quite a while without him making as much as an attempt at a drag, a pillar of ash forming. Lawrence ends up staring at him, pen still in his hand.

The camera is more important than the cigarettes. The camera is more important than most things. Adam stares into the tiny screen, brows furrowed in a concentration he wouldn’t waste on anything less. Hair standing up on one side, fingers unsentimentally stiff on the buttons.

“Any good stuff?” Lawrence asks softly. Tries to include himself in this, the dedication he so rarely gets to feel. Especially not the schoolwork he keeps getting riled up over without actually liking it.

“Huh?” Adam says absentmindedly without looking up. The cigarette jerks between his lips, ashes rain on the sheets. “Yeah, I think… they’ll be okay. Once I’ve edited them.”

He quiets down, puts the cigarette out in the ashtray next to him. Lawrence wants him to say something else. Doesn’t want to have to go back to his textbooks. Not when Adam is sitting there with something that means something to him, really means something.

Adam has beautiful hands, maybe especially when he’s holding his camera. Long, slim fingers, as pale as the rest of him, with that faint discoloring on the right hand nails after thousands of smokes. After being in a fight, he gets trouble straightening out his thumbs, since he still can’t make proper fists even though he’s been fighting his entire life.

Lawrence stands up, walks over to the mattress. Adam finally lifts his gaze. He looks kind of confused, probably because Lawrence rarely leaves his homework voluntarily. Lawrence sits in front of him and leans back, leaning his head to his chest, but it’s really uncomfortable, and Adam growls something when Lawrence’s entire body weight leans on his crossed ankles. Lawrence scoots forward a bit until he’s lying with his head in his lap. Yeah, this works.

“Which pictures are you happy with?” he asks, looking up at Adam. Even from this angle, he can tell that Adam is blushing, swallows. He’s not used to this. His lack of experience calms Lawrence a bit, but his heart is still beating heavily in his chest, feeling every flow of blood through his body. Hyper sensitive.

“Look at this one,” Adam says once he’s composed himself, swipes to a picture and holding it in front of Lawrence. “I liked the lighting. This one, see?”

So close. It’s okay.

xxxxxxxxx

Lawrence usually goes to bed around 2AM. He has to get up four hours later.

If he can, he works at the convenience store on weekends. Then he goes home to study some more.

He spreads his student loan as thin as he can, until it’s almost seeing-through with all the things it’s supposed to cover. He goes to the welfare and lies, lies, lies.

And he cleans the apartment, because it’s dusty. It’s always dusty.

It shouldn’t be a problem. Everyone he has to take care of hasn’t been a problem until he started high school, and everything he’s doing now is harder, but he’s been at it for two years. It’s not until recently that it’s actually gotten difficult.

It’s worth it, he knows that. Sleepless nights, classes where he keeps trying to keep his eyes open, but still eventually feels his head slowly fall into his notepad, eyelids sliding shut. All that time he doesn’t get to spend with Adam, Wendy, the kids. It’s worth it. As long as he gets to bring them out of this afterwards.

He’s just so tired.

Lou’s growing up. There are times when Lawrence looks at her and realizes that she’s much older than he treats her as. He still sees her as a three year-old, and when she’s sad, he tries to put her in his lap, and doesn’t realize until afterwards that if they’d been born somewhere else, she’d already started school.

It’s the same with Daniel. Just like that, he’s a soft-spoken, shy boy, not a baby anymore, doesn’t talk much but always gets his point across. Lawrence wonders if he gets something in his eyes when they ask for something. If he somehow makes them think they’re not supposed to want things. He tries to tone it down, whatever it is. He doesn’t want them to think they don’t deserve the breakfast that they ask for so unassumingly.

Daniel is about to turn six. Lawrence isn’t sure what to get him. He needs a new pair of pants. Not to mention a new bed, he has to lay folded in halves in his crib. Daniel probably wouldn’t accept the concept of education as a birthday gift. It’ll take him a few years to realize how important it is.

There are so many things he wants to give Daniel. The list of things he wants to do for other people is getting endless, too much. So heavy. The voices, the stomach pain. The tests that seem to stare at him from his desk.

“What are they?” Adam says one night, with tussled hair and sleep-deprived eyes, since Lawrence’s kicking and whining has woken him up again. “Describe it. Are they nightmares, or… like, people? Voices?”

Lawrence shakes his head, rubs his hairline.

“It’s not nightmares. And not hallucinations. I don’t see things. I don’t know, I think… I think it’s like voices. Not that they tell me to jump out a window or something, they say stuff like…”

He quiets down. Adam waits.

“It’s hard to hear what they’re saying,” he goes on. “They… they usually say… that I ain’t shit. That I’ll never… get to where I want.”

“You’ll never get out of here?”

Lawrence nods.

“Whose voice is it?” Adam asks quietly.

Lawrence shrugs.

Lou and Daniel at home. Still sharing beds.

“It sounds like myself,” he says eventually. “My voice.”

He and Adam always sleep in the same bed when they’re at his place. But that night, when Adam’s finally convinced him to lay back down, Lawrence is still only half asleep when he feels Adam scoot closer, put an arm around his waist. The warmth is like a blanket over that cold, jittery thing inside. He actually sleeps well that night.

Now that Adam has his own place, there are new possibilities. Lawrence is there as often as he can and he almost always brings the kids and Wendy, especially now that fall has settled in and the cold is getting harder to ignore. When Adam opens the door, Lou leaps in and hugs him, and Lawrence orders her and Daniel to hit the shower, they turn the entire bathroom into something resembling a wet Ground Zero and Lawrence asks Adam if he wants them to stop shamelessly using him, and Adam just rolls his eyes.

The only thing harder for Lawrence than accepting favors is accepting the idea that Adam doesn’t even consider it a favor; he does this because he likes him.

Lawrence wakes him up again another night, the millionth fucking night probably, hates himself and hates himself even more when he notices how Adam still doesn’t get annoyed at all. Patiently sits up with a sigh, and doesn’t even acknowledge Lawrence’s stuttering apologies.

“Sorry, I’m sorry,” he says, voice giving out, and starts biting his nails, can’t even hold it back until he’s stopped talking. “It’s… I’m fine. Go back to sleep.”

“It’s cool,” Adam says and wraps his blanket around him like a cape.

“No, you need your sleep. Lay back down. When I keep waking you up…”

“Shut up,” Adam mutters.

Lawrence immediately obeys. He hates this. If Adam had hissed something and pulled the covers over his head, or at least been annoyed for real, it’d been bearable. But as it is now, he knows Adam only pretends to be bothered because he’s worried.

Adam’s reactions are slower when he’s tired. Lawrence doesn’t dare to say anything, so he just sits there biting his nails while Adam stares blankly, rubbing his eyes, sighs heavily and reaches for the ashtray next to the mattress.

“Get off your fucking nails,” he then says, finally looking a little annoyed. Lawrence drops his hand right away. Then they’re quiet a bit longer, until Adam sighs again.

“You cold?”

“No.”

Adam nods tiredly. It’s not until then that Lawrence gets that he indirectly offered to share his blanket, and immediately regrets his answer.

Whatever’s still between them always gets worse during these times. When Lawrence is desperate, so torn up that he forgets he’s not supposed to show how much he cares about him, when Adam is _there_ without questioning anything. And even though Lawrence’s experience with sexual urges is limited to one night next to a dumpster, he sees Adam, pale, cold, hair standing straight up on the one side, and isn’t quite sure what he wants to do.

Yeah, he is. He wants to touch him.

“If you had any kind of body fat, you wouldn’t be cold, either,” he says when he dares to talk again, and Adam scoffs, grins.

“Same thing again?” he eventually asks. Lawrence nods.

“Yeah.”

Adam nods, too, and they’re quiet again. A crease grows visible between Adam’s brows, and he shakes his head angrily. Lawrence thinks he’s finally about to throw a fit, but when Adam looks at him again, he just looks helpless, and it scares him.

“They never go away?” Adam asks. “Are you ever satisfied with yourself? Do they go away then?”

Lawrence smiles hopelessly and shakes his head.

“Not really. Sorry.”

He looks up at Adam. He’s looking so sad that Lawrence can barely stand it.

“Doesn’t anything make you feel better?” he asks.

Lawrence looks at Adam. Slim fingers around the cigarette. Somber eyes. His mouth.

There’s a simple way for him to get through school. There’s something that’d make him so happy and so _whole_ that no voices would get inside his head again.

But of course it’s not that simple, and it never will be.

xxxxxxxxx

Daniel’s birthday comes quicker than Lawrence was prepared for. Since he refuses to ask Adam for money for this, too, he takes a fiver out of mom’s handbag and buys him a muffin at 7 Eleven. Lou is unsuccessful at hiding her envy, so Daniel gives her a piece. Lawrence really wonders where he learned to be so damn sweet.

Mom has one of her bad days. It’s the only thing keeping this from being perfect. She probably doesn’t even remember that it’s Daniel’s birthday, so Lawrence can’t really blame her for not even pretending for him, but he still feels his pretty much non-existent sympathy for her shrinking even further.

She’s rummaging around the kitchen. Lawrence is sitting with Daniel in his lap, next to the one window; this’ll probably be his last chance to do so, his little brother is getting so big. Somehow hopes they won’t notice she’s here.

“Was it good?” Lawrence asks, looking at Daniel who has chocolate crumbs all over his mouth.

Daniel nods joyfully and drops the muffin wrapper on the table in front of him. Lou can’t accept that the quota of good things they’ll have for the next six months is filled thusly, so she grabs the chocolatey wrapper and starts chewing it.

“When’s your birthday, Lawrence?” she asks, mouth full of paper. “We never celebrate it, right? Your birthday?”

Lawrence smiles, leaning his face into Daniel’s head.

“No, we don’t. Should we?”

“Of course we should,” Daniel says, turning to him. “You didn’t get a muffin. You should have a muffin too. You should.”

“I don’t need a muffin, honey,” Lawrence says, clasping his hands across Daniel’s belly. “You don’t have to worry about me.”

Daniel doesn’t seem to think this is a good enough explanation. He appears to be deep in thought, but before he has time to disagree, mom turns around, leans against the counter with a coffee cup in one hand and a cigarette dangling from her lip.

“Permission to interrupt the fuzzie-wuzzie moment?” she says politely.

No one answers her. She scoffs, like she’s annoyed with herself for expecting more from these fucking kids that insist on living in her apartment.

“Why are you playing Santa Claus?” she says, taking a few steps toward Lawrence.

Even when there are no men here, she still walks that way she does when they come over. Her lower body moving a little bit in front of the rest of her, hips are probably supposed to sway seductively, but move more like subway doors opening. Sort of jittery.

“It’s Daniel’s birthday,” he answers.

She scoffs again. The coffee pot is bubbling behind her.

“How old is he?”

“Six.”

“By my sixth, I’d been raped twice.”

She smiles while saying it. Makes a point out of staring Lou and Daniel in the faces. Lawrence isn’t as important, this stuff doesn’t scare him anymore.

“Raped. Larry hasn’t explained that word? Someone fucked me against my will. Get it? When I was younger than Daniel.”

Daniel’s eyes are wide. Lawrence realizes that just like his and Lou’s, Daniel’s eyes look a lot like hers. Those crazy eyes staring at them now, the woman in the kitchen that never was their mom.

Why can’t they have their own eyes? Why did she have to have them first?

“That’s not their fault,” he says calmly. “Leave them alone.”

Her eyes narrow. Coffee cup in hand.

“The fuck’s your problem?” she says through gritted teeth. “I’m just trying to… _teach_ them shit! They shouldn’t know about this just because you’re hanging with rich fucking brats?”

Lawrence wants to hit her. But as usual, he’s good at pushing that aside.

“You mean Adam? Don’t talk that way about him.”

It’s his little sister that speaks up; that girl that he still doesn’t get is much older than he sees her.

Mom looks at Lou. It seems to take her a few seconds to get that she’s supposed to get angry, and when she does, she smiles, that sweet venomous grin.

“Yeah,” she says. “You like him, don’t you?”

Lawrence sees her fingers squeeze the handle of the cup. No. Not today.

Lou goes on before mom manages to say whatever she was going to.

“You’re always so mean to us,” she says soberly. “But what did we ever do to you?”

It all happens so quickly. Before Lou has time to react and before Lawrence should be able to, mom’s lifted the cup and struck it against her daughter’s head, but Lawrence manages to put Daniel down, get up and stand in the way. It cracks against his head, but doesn’t break. Lawrence closes his eyes, because he doesn’t want to see everything retracting to a white dot, blood a thin runnel in the corner of his eye, doesn’t want to give her the power.

He’s done with this now.

He’s not sure why that is. She’s hit him before, though not often, and probably Lou and Daniel too, more times than he wants to remember. And maybe it’s the knowledge that this is how Daniel’s going to remember his birthday, no matter how good Lawrence wanted to make it. This is what’s going to stick, not the muffin.

Maybe it’s the fact that Adam actually managed to get out, he doesn’t have to deal with these people anymore, the ones who stole his eyes. And Lawrence has to get way further away than this apartment, but he has to start somewhere, has to get away from the dust, the thing that sticks under his skin and crawls into his genes, making him the same as her. Right now, it feels like he hasn’t moved an inch since he started school. Despite everything that was supposed to be different after that.

Lawrence opens his mouth. Everything feels too much, every syllable across his lips, the blood running down his temple, but he still says very unceremoniously:

“We’re leaving.”

She raises her eyebrows with disinterest.

“Okay.”

Lawrence doesn’t acknowledge that she said something. It’s like in exorcist movies; the monster knows all his weaknesses, and if he listens to something it tells him, he’ll never be able to cast it out.

“We’re not coming back. We’re never coming back. Lou and Daniel are going off to school. They’re going to get an education. They won’t be like you. They’re going to grow up. You won’t get to see them.”

It seems to dawn on her that he’s serious. But she doesn’t look sad. More confused.

“I’ll get them out of here,” Lawrence says. “You won’t come near them again, ever. They’re not yours. They never were.”

They stare at each other for a moment. Lawrence looks her in the eye and sees nothing.

“Louise and Daniel,” he then says, trying to sound mundane. “We’re going to stay with Adam for a while. You have anything you want to bring there?”

Lou and Daniel are petrified for a second before they start gathering their stuff. Daniel grabs his blanket, Lou her toy, the stolen little plastic pony. Lawrence grabs a bag and shoves down some of their clothes, and his textbooks. He feels her gaze, but doesn’t meet it, since he knows himself and knows she can get him to change his mind.

When he’s gathered up their stuff, she’s still staring at him. Still holding the coffee cup.

Lawrence doesn’t know what to say. What to feel.

“I’ll get in touch when I’ve started college,” he says tonelessly. “Just so you’ll know I’m alive.”

She just stands there. Lawrence feels that it’s important for them to leave right now.

“We’re going,” he says and grabs a child by each hand. “Say bye, guys.”

They wave halfheartedly.

“Bye,” Lou says.

Daniel says nothing. Lawrence starts walking to the front door.

He knows they have to get at least a hundred feet from the apartment before it’s somewhat certain that he won’t go back. Until he’s come that far, it’s important that he focuses on strictly practical thoughts. Lawrence holds the small hands tight and tries to calculate how much of his soles will be worn down by the walk to the subway. If it’s safe to assume that they’re worn a bit more when he runs across the street and a little less when he stops to tie Daniel’s shoe.

And a little more when he walks on gravel. Those thoughts are safe.

Wendy’s sitting by their car, fiddling with her phone. Her face lights up when she sees them, before they get a little closer and she sees the bag around Lawrence’s wrist, his absent but furious gaze.

“What happened?” she asks, standing up.

Lawrence shakes his head.

“We’re going,” he says, twisting the handle of the plastic bag tighter around his wrist, like that’s what keeping him in reality. “Come on. We’re going.”

Wendy looks from him to the bag to the cut on his head. It takes her a few to get what the problem is, and when she does, she scratches her shoulder awkwardly.

“Yeah, sure,” she says hesitatingly. “But… like, what am I gonna do? I can’t… I can’t stay there, Lawrence.”

Lawrence closes his eyes for a second. He’s not in the state to discuss this right now and he doesn’t get why she can’t just do what he tells her. Why is shit so complicated and why can’t it stay in that tiny sphere where he feels he’s in control.

“I don’t fucking know,” he says. His voice sounds like someone else’s. “Can you just come?”

He probably looks angry, because Wendy looks at him like she does when she thinks he’s an idiot to think he can still intimidate her. She shakes her head, but then shrugs and starts walking. Lawrence is glad she didn’t say what it was she was thinking. Whatever it was, it was probably of the category of things he’s not allowed to think about.

They keep walking. Lawrence somehow manages to put one foot in front of the other, though it’s a minor miracle. The only thing he’s feeling now is an overwhelming desire to go back.

He takes it out the wrong way. When they’ve reached the subway and it says the next train arrives in seventeen minutes, Lou starts whining, and Daniel looks like he could fall asleep on the spot. Lawrence hisses that they need to suck it up until they get there, and when Wendy looks at him that way again, he shoots back a glance twice as venomous.

He gets frustrated with them, because they don’t get how hard this is for him, and with himself, for it being hard for him.

When they finally ring the doorbell, Lawrence’s feet are aching, not because they’ve been walking that long, but just because it feels like they have. Adam opens the door without looking that surprised.

“Starsky and Hutch,” he says when he sees Lawrence and Wendy. “Hey, guys,” he then says to Daniel and Lou. “Come on, get in here.”

Lou wordlessly passes him into the apartment, Daniel follows. Usually they’d run around, go through Adam’s old comic books, but not today. Lou grabs an apple from the counter and huddles up on the spare mattress, and Daniel falls asleep next to her. Adam looks at Lawrence, slightly amused, but got from the second he opened up that this is one of those rare times when he better make an effort to stay serious.

“Mom stuff?” he asks quietly, as if the kids would’ve missed it.

Lawrence feels his hands trembling now that they don’t have theirs to hold on to. He’s too tired to deal with this.

“I’m not going back,” he says. “Can we stay here for a while`”

Adam gaze flickers between him and Wendy. Then he slaps Lawrence’s shoulder. It was probably meant to be a short tap, but Lawrence is grateful that he keeps his hand there.

“You can stay as long as you want, man.”

xxxxxxxxx

Lou and Daniel sleep piled up on each other, tangled in the other’s limbs. It’s always been a comfort to them, and will probably stay that way for a long time, even though they’ll never have to fall asleep with their hands covering their ears again, blocking out the sound of someone fucking their mom. Wendy’s collapsed in the chair next to them. Lawrence already knows where he’s sleeping tonight.

He’s sitting with Adam on his bed. They have to be quiet not to wake up the others. It’s a challenge, since Lawrence works with every force within to contain a scream that’ll never stop once he lets it out.

They’re sitting on Adam’s bed. It should be familiar. But it’s all different now.

Over now.

Everything Lawrence was scared of, he’s left in that apartment. Technically. None of the histories that were repeated will be again, because they were all repeated there.

He’s hated it for so long, he’s almost forgotten why.

The apartment. The dust. (It got under his skin) Somna. The parking lot where he sat next to Wendy, the entire fucking subway line leading to it.

He should have some good memories from there. He’s had good times, with Wendy, and even when everything’s shit, there are still days that are better than others. But he’s hated it, constantly, from the most rotten, black depth of his hatred. Just on reflex, because it was simpler that way. Blaming everything on the neighborhood and hoping that it’d change once he got away from it.

It should be what happens. It’s all gone.

Never again have to guess if she has a good or bad day. Wash his clothes with a scrub brush in the sink. The buzzing fluorescent lights in that store he used to work. Lie to the bitch at the welfare. The burrow of filthy hair that was the only visible part of her when she was in bed all day.

That cold feeling when he’s filled out his address in some form at school. The fear that the teacher would yank it from his hand and screech out to the class: “Look, everyone! The top student is a little _somniac!”_

He knows the voices will wake him up tonight again. Despite everything he’s left behind. The dust is under the skin. All that stuff that never went away.

“How are you feeling?” Adam asks, lighting a cigarette.

Lawrence swallows.

“I didn’t feel much at all when… when it happened. I guess I still don’t. I couldn’t. In front of them. Just freak out.”

“Why would you freak out? You feel… this way because you wanted to get away?”

Lawrence nods frenetically. Whatever it is, he can’t hold it back anymore, he doesn’t even know what it is, or where it’s coming from.

“I know. I know. But what the fuck is going to happen to her now?”

From his own viewpoint, he’s pretty put together. But Adam looks more and more worried.

“Sh-she’s my _mom,”_ he coughs out. “Like, what’s going to happen to her now? One of the guys can beat her to death when I’m not there, or she can starve, or freeze to death, or start shooting up, or, fuck, and I won’t be there to help her, bec-cause…”

He abruptly quiets down. Or his voice cracks. Adam puts a hesitant hand on his knee.

“It’s not your job to save her from that shit,” he says.

Lawrence shakes his head.

“I could’ve done more.”

“Of course you could,” Adam says simply. “That doesn’t mean you _should._ It’s like… you’re still the… _kid_ here, aren’t ya?”

Even in staggering panic, Lawrence starts at that word.

A kid. Him.

Per definition, he’s still a kid. And he’s been one long after he stopped considering himself one. But still, he’s not sure he ever was one.

The way he remembers his childhood, it got lost in some sort of life consuming state of _her._ Getting rid of knives, sitting in the welfare office and lie, lie, lie before he even knew what the truth was. Not only did he have to microwave frozen pizzas and hide pills most of the time he was with her, everything else became about that, too.

Everything resembling a childhood disappeared. She ruined everything. Running around kicking soda cans with Wendy, seeing her for the first time and falling so completely, overwhelmingly in love. _She_ was always in the back of his mind.

And if she weren’t, she made sure to be the only thing he could focus on when he got home. Then he had to pay. For having fun at all.

Lawrence doesn’t know a childhood. It ended for him the second she gave birth to him without becoming a mother.

“I know you don’t want to be,” Adam goes on. It has to show how this makes Lawrence feel, because his voice is soft in that way it never is unless Lawrence absolutely needs it. “And fuck knows you don’t act like one. But that’s just because she hasn’t let you. If she’d been a real mom, she wouldn’t have wanted you to be this way.”

Everything he’s saying is true. Lawrence still has to clasp his hand over his mouth to keep from shouting that he doesn’t have a fucking clue.

That it’s too late for this now.

It’s such a relief. Such a relief. But it hurts. Something black and slimy coming up from within, and suddenly, he’s collapsed on the mattress and Adam has to wrap both arms around him to keep him from toppling down on the floor.

He knows he shouldn’t have, and if he’d done more for her, he would’ve disappeared. But he can’t think that way. Lawrence believes in facts and numbers. And the thought that technically, it wasn’t physically impossible for him to do more for his mom, is something he’ll carry with him for as long as he lives.

The next morning, Lawrence misses a day in school for the first time since Daniel got sick. Not because he consciously skips it, but because he spends most of the night shivering violently in Adam’s lap, eyes wide, hands clawing themselves spasmodically until he’s gotten them striped in red.

He doesn’t fall asleep until six-ish that morning. He’s still sound asleep two hours later, which is when Adam gets up, calls them both in sick and crawls down next to him again.

 


	21. Crossing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DID SOMEONE SAY BANGIN
> 
> There's a dubcon element of what we in Sweden call tjatsex which is basically one party nagging for the sexy times
> 
> and yes, I'm fully aware that this isn't how scholarships work. Just consider this entire universe to be the cartoonishly evil way I view the school system. 
> 
> I also want you to know that I suck at replying to reviews, but seriously, they make me squee and water my crops and puts food on my table

Adam never thought he’d be okay with studying. But looking at the time, he realizes it’s been almost two hours, flying by with frantic coffee chugging, stacks of Lawrence’s notes across the table, almost half an hour of silence until Lawrence finds something else they have to memorize and they discuss it for a while.

They have an exam on religion coming up. Lawrence force-feeds Adam knowledge when he’s not busy doing the same to himself. The kids are out in the park across the street. No one can be more focused than Lawrence when he wants to be, but Adam keeps catching him glancing at the window.

“What’s the deal with the hereditary sin?” Adam asks suddenly and puts his book down. “Did Eve fuck that up for all girls, eating that apple?”

Lawrence looks up, sporting the “off guard but still prepared with a perfect answer” look. His bangs are ruffled from all the times he’s run his hand through it. Adam almost has to look away from him.

“Yeah, she did,” Lawrence says. “She ate the apple, and as a punishment, God made it so it’d always hurt to give birth.”

“Always for her?”

“No, always for all the women. They had to be punished, too.”

“Why?”

Lawrence smiles patiently.

“You don’t have to know that for the test. It’s enough to know that Eve fucked up, at it pissed off God.”

“Yeah, but…” Adam gestures halfheartedly to the book. “Like, I get that this is the same dude that says it’s a sin to touch pig skins, but what’s the fucking point of that? Women are supposed to be punished for something someone did three thousand years ago, just cause that person also had a pussy? That tiny thing in common is enough for them to have to go through the same shit she did?”

“They’re paying for the sins of their predecessors. It’s religion, Adam. It’s not supposed to be fair.”

“What’s fair. I’m just talking logic. So it doesn’t matter if all the girls following her did everything right and knew their place? They still have to pay for a dumb chick listening to a snake?”

“Hereditary sin doesn’t care about that. It’s about where you come from, not what you do, or even what you _want_ to do.”

“Then we’re fucked from the get go.”

“Yeah. But we don’t have to give birth.”

xxxxxxxxx

“Damn it, could you focus?” Lawrence says, grabbing Adam’s sleeve and tries to drag him back to the counter. “Lookit. I’ll do the mash, you do the… what do they call it. Mince. Okay?”

Adam keeps giggling as Lawrence lifts his hand, putting a ladle in it. Once he’s taken a legit hold of it and Lawrence deems it safe to let him get back to work, it only takes a few seconds for Adam to poke his arm, voice quivering with held-back laughter.

“Lawrence, look,” Adam says, putting the concave part of the black ladle over his nose. “I’m a koala bear.”

Lawrence throws his head back laughing, and Adam starts giggling so hard that the ladle falls off his nose, which of course makes it even funnier.

They were going to try their luck with the Tupperware life tonight by making Shepherd’s pie. It’s practical, since it’s not too expensive, and if they prepare a lot of it, they can eat half of it tonight and still have enough for dinner tomorrow. But since Adam doesn’t like cooking, and his reaction to everything he doesn’t like is making a game out of it, they haven’t gotten very far. Lawrence can’t really stay serious when he isn’t.

It takes them a few minutes to calm down. Lawrence tries to regain his role as the one who knows what he’s doing.

“Okay,” he says, leaning his forehead to Adam’s shoulder. “Okay. Focus?”

Adam nods, though he’s still chuckling, and picks the ladle off the floor.

They keep going. Lawrence works the potatoes with a fork, and Adam tries his best to slice carrots without making dick jokes, and it goes okay, with Daniel and Lou watching TV in the background.

But then there’s one of those moments. It’s not a big deal, all Adam does is reach across Lawrence to get something, but Lawrence looks up, they’re practically skin to skin and Adam feels his breath on his cheek, and he forgets what he was going to get.

It feels like it happens more and more. These moments when they’re just so _close,_ and Adam has to repeat to himself that it won’t happen, they decided, both of them, he might as well let it go.

Might as well clear his head of the images popping up. But it’s hard, it’s so hard.

Adam pulls back before it gets too much. It takes him a few to remember that he was reaching for the measuring cup, but no way in hell he’ll lean across Lawrence again to get it.

They serve a passable dinner about an hour later. Wendy eats until she looks she’s about to burst, and Lou and Daniel are ecstatic about getting real food. Adam wonders how happy they’d be about dinner if they knew the only thing on his mind while making it was how badly he wanted to kiss their brother.

xxxxxxxxx

Classes have come to a halt. While Adam’s never seen this many of the students, whom he, true to his punk brat self, has always considered living dead, look so alive.

Except for Lawrence, of course. He can’t be nervous like normal teenagers about something like this. He doesn’t get a little giggly and excited, he’s completely shut down, hollow-eyed, white lips, hands balled tight on his knees.

They’ve known about this for the whole semester. The teachers are handing out the scholarships today, working through the classroom. You’ve been good, you haven’t. You’ve been good, you’re shit.

Most of them don’t care, because most of these students don’t need a scholarship to pursue an education. The ones getting them today will see it as nothing but a proof of their superiority, and use it for textbooks and a flashy college life. Their parents will pay for further education, and they won’t have to do that until another couple of years. These students will afford to take a stupid year to find themselves and go to Thailand and think about what they want.

This is a fun thing to them. They run between the classrooms, yelling to their friends: “THEY’VE STARTED THE C NAMES!” Faces flushed, because their last names are only three letters away. The only thing making classes this unmanageable is picture day.

Because they can afford to think like this.

Adam’s pretty sure college was a lot cheaper when their parents were young. He’s never thought about it, always known that even a community college would be hesitant to accept him. But still – theoretically, he does have money. He, who didn’t pass one test in during his entire freshman year and can even afford to play poor, could get wherever he wants.

Adam’s sitting next to Lawrence on the floor, next to the door to the teacher’s lounge. He’s not sure why Lawrence can’t sit in the classroom like everyone else, but he guesses it’s because if his name gets called, he won’t have to walk far. If he did, he’d collapse. Students have been called through that door the whole day, to sit down with their councilors. A few minutes later, they walk out, giggling hysterically, carrying one of those lame checks the size of a small rug.

When they sat down, little over an hour ago, Lawrence sent envious glances at the ones passing them with that oversized piece of cardboard. Now, he barely seems to notice when the door opens.

It’s been quiet for too long. Adam wants to say something, but he’s not sure if he’s supposed to be supportive or try to make him think of something else.

“You wanna go out tonight?” is what he settles for. “You need a break, right? Wendy can look after the kids.”

At first, it doesn’t seem like Lawrence is going to reply. Then he takes a breath and seems to decide to appreciate Adam’s efforts, even though they’re totally fucking useless, really.

“Sure,” he says. “Sounds great. Can we afford it?”

“We’ll… figure something out. I’ll cut back on the smokes. Or we’ll sneak coffee from the teacher’s lounge in the mornings. It’ll be cool.”

Lawrence nods. Mouth still a thin line.

“You need to puke?”

“No.”

“Promise me you’ll eat lunch today.”

“Okay.”

“Lawrence…”

It’d be much easier if Lawrence would look at him. Give him some sort of hint if what he’s saying helps at all, if it even sticks, gets through the shell of self loathing. Adam wonders if it’d be better if he left. Knows somehow that if he did, Lawrence wouldn’t be able to stand up at all if his name is called.

Adam looks at the white-knuckled fists on Lawrence’s jeans. The only way he knows how to get through the shell is to touch him.

“However it’ll go…” he says, without touching him. “It’s not like… it’s not your fault they love preps at this school. If you don’t… if you don’t get it, it’s because they think you’re white trash, not because you’re not smart. And Peters loves you, he’s probably put a word in with the board. And you can redo some classes, that’s always an option. And then you’ll get the scholarship next year.”

Lawrence’s lips tighten further. Adam knows that the tiniest insinuation that he wouldn’t get the scholarship starts a flood of negativity over that tiny, tiny piece of hope he does have, but he’s convinced he needs to hear this. That it’s not the end of the world if things don’t go according to plan.

“And I’ll be here,” he adds, feels his cheeks heating up. “Whatever… whatever happens.”

A moment when Adam just wants to sink through the floor, hates saying this stuff. Then Lawrence actually looks at him. Through the corner of his eye, still like he’s staring death in the face, but it at least makes Adam hopeful. He hopes for all he’s worth that it has the same effect on Lawrence.

They sit there for a while. Don’t talk again, because Adam’s drained his account as far as terms of endearment. In the few romcoms he’s seen, it’s a standing element that they don’t have to talk, because the one person knows what the other one is thinking. Lawrence probably has no idea what he’s thinking, he’s too nervous to reach someone else, but Adam wishes he had. Then he wouldn’t have to feel bad that he’s not saying it.

Adam’s been as scared of this day as Lawrence has. How do you tell your best friend that your insides freeze at the idea that his biggest dream would come true?

Then Lawrence’s name is called, he looks like he’s going to faint, and Adam thinks that no matter what happens over the next few months, he better make damn sure to pretend to be happy.

xxxxxxxxx

A few hours later, they’re sitting on their bed. It’s late. Lawrence managed to stay somewhat calm as he walked out of the teacher’s lounge, because he knew that if he even tried to describe to Adam how happy he was he’d start crying and cling to him like he couldn’t stand up without him, and it seemed unnecessary. There are enough gay rumors about them circling around school.

When they got home, he told Wendy. That felt easier. He cried, she cried, Adam just grinned and hugged him, probably because he thought that if he did that, Lawrence wouldn’t notice that his smile didn’t reach his eyes.

Then he locked himself in the bathroom a while. Not long enough for it to seem suspicious. Adam’s so good at lying that Lawrence has picked up on his methods.

The kids are asleep. The check Lawrence got is leaned against the wall of the kitchenette, it feels like it’s staring judgingly at them. Wendy’s gone to work Lawrence’s night shift at the sticky convenience store, Adam and Lawrence are sitting on the bed and are officially out of excuses, now they’re actually going to have to talk to each other, but Adam can’t look him in the eye. He feels equal levels of pissed off and rotten to the core.

He’s so happy for Lawrence. In the meantime as he’s prepared to tie him to the bed to keep him here.

Once he gets up, Adam won’t know where he’s headed.

“I’m going to have to take a student loan,” Lawrence says, looking at his hands. “I won’t have to work, and be able to get an apartment. I’ll bring Lou and Daniel, they can start school wherever we’ll end up.”

Adam nods. Now he’s the one who can’t stop biting his nails. He wants a smoke so bad…

“Have you decided where to apply?” he asks, looking around for his packet of cigarettes. He knows he’s on a budget, but jesus…

Lawrence doesn’t answer right away. He was hoping they could skip this part.

“There’s only one program in north America that’s focused on surgery,” he says quietly. “And it’s in Canada, but there might be others, like, here, I’ll look into it, or I don’t know, if not…”

He quiets down, realizing he’s not making any sense and that Adam’s not listening anyway. He froze when he said the Canada part, a second too long for it to go unnoticed, and then nods. Trying to pretend that he hasn’t dreaded this since he actually started to care about Lawrence. Then he nods.

“What’s Wendy going to do?” Like she’s the important one.

Lawrence shrugs.

“It’s up to her. Of course she can come if she wants to. But I don’t see her affording it.”

Adam nods again. Fuck. Does it have to be so hard?

“And me?”

Lawrence finally looks up. He looks so tormented that Adam feels bad for asking. He looks Lawrence in the eye, even though he feels himself blushing.

Lawrence shakes his head, impatiently now.

“What do you want me to say?”

Adam sighs and lights his cigarette, mostly to have something else to look at.

“I want you to say you’re not going anywhere, you’ll stay with me in this apartment for the rest of your life… or at least that you’ll take me with you.”

Lawrence shakes his head again. A tiny crease appears between his brows, and Adam finally sees what’s been luring beneath the surface the whole night.

If his anxiety makes him hear voices normally, it’ll be twice as hard now.

“Can’t you come with?”

Adam should get moved, but just gets pissed.

“With what fucking money?” he hisses and almost crumbles the cigarette when he shoves it back in the ashtray. “I’ll do whatever the fuck it takes, but I’m _broke,_ and _I’m_ not the fucking one going off…”

He quiets down, a bit too late. Lawrence looks at him, annoyed. Eyes dark, jaw tight, a tsunami of things he’s not going to say. Almost gets lost in it until he sees the two kids lying piled up on the mattress on the other end of the room, and remembers that even though it feels like it sometimes, Adam’s not the most important thing in his life.

“Man, I don’t know…” he says desperately, scratches his arm. “Cause, like, I’ll miss you like hell, but I can’t not do this just because it’s scary… it’ll never be a second chance, you know? And the kids… I gotta… I can’t stay just…”

_I can’t stay here just for you._

He doesn’t say it, but Adam hears it anyway, Lawrence sees the moment the words hit him. He actually flinches, like he’s been slapped, and stands up. Everything Lawrence said was true, but for some reason, it feels important that he feels as shitty about this as Adam does.

Lawrence doesn’t have time to speak up before the front door slams.

xxxxxxxxx

Lawrence is afraid of the dark. Not when Adam is with him, but the rest of the time. He’s scared of the dark, and of waters where he can’t see the bottom. When he was younger, he thought there were crocodiles in it. And sharks. Anything could be down there, really, since he couldn’t see what it was.

When Adam was really young, he wasn’t afraid of anything. There was nothing mom and dad couldn’t protect him from, and since Claire thought he hung the moon, he must’ve been able to defend himself from most things, even if it didn’t always feel like it. But when he got older, after the broken china in the kitchen, he got terrified of dad going away.

He’d be quiet and sad for the whole day after dad left on his trips. Because he always did, something always drove him off. And it was even worse when it was Adam who was going away. Once when he was nine or something and was supposed to take the flight by himself to visit his grandparents in Missouri, he sat at the airport crying until the nice stewardess called mom.

Mom came to fly with him in the end, but it didn’t help. Adam wasn’t scared of being alone. He was scared of not getting home again. Being alone was fine as long as he knew he had somewhere to go when he couldn’t do it anymore.

He’s not afraid of that anymore. It’s already happened.

xxxxxxxxx

They’ve been through so much. It shouldn’t have to end like this.

Even though Lawrence knows he’ll live here until he leaves, because that’s the way it has to be, he knows that if Adam doesn’t come home tonight, this’ll be the end. It’ll be ten months like that dark period, when they kept walking one foot away from each other.

Lawrence hasn’t been able to move since Adam left. He’s not crying. Kind of weird, he usually at least tears up when they fight. Despite a life of conflicts, he can’t stand arguing with Adam.

But Adam does come back. When the door opens and Lawrence looks up at him, he wants to hug him and cry until he’s dried up and say that he’ll stay, anything, just don’t hate me, but even from below, Adam looks terrifying. It’s the first time that Lawrence doesn’t dare to touch him.

“Where have you been?” Such a normal question seems completely out of place. Lawrence stands up.

“Out. Walking. Then I sat in the hallway. For a while. Lawrence…”

Adam’s eyes are red-rimmed and he doesn’t seem sure what to do with his hands. He hugs himself, scraping his nails over the elbows of his jacket. When he finally sticks his fingers in his hair and holds them there, giving himself a facelift but looks just as miserable, Lawrence sees that his knuckles are bloody.

“What’d you do to your hand?”

“I punched the wall a little. Get off.” Adam yanks the hand out of his grasp. It probably hurts Lawrence more than it does him. “I don’t get your deal, you know that? You’re so goddamn selfless and giving and blah blah with everyone else, but not me. It feels like it’s all about you. Our entire thing. I’ve no problem with you talking to me about everything. That’s not it. But do you even get how often I think about that fucking night? Next to the dumpster?”

Lawrence can barely process what he’s saying, even though he already knew all of it. He sees Adam like this maybe once a year. When his dad has done something particularly terrible, when he’s worried about Lawrence. It takes a lot to make him like this rather than pissed off, this brokenly nervous.

“I know,” is all he can think to say. “I know it’s… it’s been hard.”

God, he’s terrible at this.

“I think about it too, Adam. Not all the time, but, like, a lot. It’s not that I don’t want…”

Voice dies out. Adam looks at Lawrence with panic, eyes empty and staring and _demanding,_ and even though Lawrence knows that that’s probably the case, he hopes that Adam doesn’t feel this way when Lawrence has his episodes. When that pleading gaze is his.

“I… I want to go,” Lawrence says, takes a step back. Just as pleading. “I’m _going_ to go. It… you can’t keep me here, not even you can, but…”

Adam’s stopped twisting his hands, they’ve frozen on his elbows. The look he gives Lawrence is like he doesn’t understand how he can speak these words.

“…I’d really like you with me.”

Adam just stares. It feels like Lawrence reaches his scraped fingertips through his chest, touching the heavy, bleeding thing that he never lets anyone else even know that it’s there. They’ve always been close, in this exact way, but this night, when it’s needed the most, it’s like they only say half of what they should.

Adam grabs Lawrence’s shirt. They meet in a pretty messy kiss, teeth clacking together, Adam knows he can do better but doesn’t care. Despite thinking of little else during the past year, he’s not that interested in having sex with Lawrence right now. His thoughts stretch to how it hurts and he wants to feel something else, Lawrence is going to leave him and he wants him to stay, and whatever they do tonight won’t make it easier, but who the hell cares, what does anything fucking matter anymore.

It feels so empty. Even though they’re pressed together with every available inch of their bodies, it feels empty.

Adam’s sure it feels the same to Lawrence; like they never stopped, like they’ve been doing this the whole time, hands never stopped moving. It takes him a while to realize that he’s pressed up against the wall, with Lawrence’s entire weight on him. He forces himself to stop enjoying it, grabs him and flips them around, so that when they land on the bed, he’s on top. Mostly for his own sake, and so that Lawrence can blame him afterwards. He leaves Lawrence’s mouth for a second to get his jacket off, but when he leans back down, Lawrence turns his head away.

“Adam…” he says solemnly.

Adam presses his lips together. They’re swollen, tasting of warm, sweet saliva. He’s sitting on top of the only person in the world that he loves.

When that thought hits him, along with Lawrence’s turned-away gaze, it hurts too goddamn much again, he slaps Lawrence’s hands away and kisses him, begging, please, stay, knows that Lawrence feels it, doesn’t care.

He doesn’t care that he’s openly vulnerable for the first time in forever. He doesn’t care that if Lawrence got a say in this, he’d start whining about how this would “just ruin everything,” because this is their last time. Together, like this.

After this, Adam is going to pull back. He won’t let himself get too close. That’s the way it has to be. This was always the way it was supposed to go.

Lawrence isn’t sure what he’s allowed to do with his hands. He’s not sure what people allow, and even less what Adam allows. When they fight, when one of them is sad, _regular_ stuff, he just gets annoyed when Lawrence tries to touch him, but that doesn’t seem to apply now. When he grips his shoulder, Adam pulls back a second, breathing quivering air. Lawrence doesn’t know what that means until Adam’s hand is in his shirt and it’s like a hot pulse beat, all new and foreign, and still like they’ve been heading for this the entire time, which they probably have. Somewhere in the back of his mind, there’s mom, slathering noises from filthy sheets, and Lawrence wants to pull back, but just as much as he wants, wants, without knowing what he’s longing for.

Adam does his best to keep calm, because Lawrence is nervous, because he doesn’t want to ruin more than he has to. When he accidentally looks Lawrence in the eye, Lawrence looks away again. His cheeks are bright red, his gaze everywhere in the room except for on Adam.

“It’ll make it harder for me to go,” he mumbles, seems to be talking to himself.

Adam sighs. Tries to get annoyed, but instincts take over, as always. He halfheartedly runs his hand through Lawrence’s hair.

“I know.”

Lawrence takes his hand off Adam’s back and starts biting his nails. Adam wants to punch him, but settles for pushing his hand from his mouth.

“You can’t leave without us doing it. _That’ll_ be hard.”

“We won’t know what we’re missing.”

“Exactly.”

Lawrence opens his mouth, closes it again. Adam can’t wait for him to argue, he’d just say something stupid, something lame and super intelligent, so he puts his hand on his chin, tilts his head back and remembers he’s always loved kissing, even with girls, even though it was never like this. He didn’t really want to sleep with them, the act itself was mostly tiring, hollow, the second he came he had no interest in it.

Adam doesn’t really expect this to make him feel better. But he’s not going to let Lawrence get away with something as stupid as this bringing them closer together. He’s let worse excuses than that get under his radar and he’s sick of it. Lawrence has been the only thing in his life that’s clean and untainted. Or, he’s probably every bit as broken as he is, really, but to Adam, he’s perfect, and he hasn’t wanted to dirty him up with what he has inside himself, that ugly, twisted thing that’s driven everyone else away. Whatever’s making him so impossible to love.

Damn near a year of abstinence in the hope that that would make him stay… it feels kind of pointless now. Especially after a whole life excluded from all the things that normal people deserve. Now everything he’s struggled for has gone to shit, so why shouldn’t he have this, which is _his,_ just once, and then never again?

Adam doesn’t know why he keeps going when it hurts more the further they go, every piece of clothing shed is a layer deeper into that hot, searing, fragile that he’s going to shut off. Towards the end, Lawrence’s mouth tastes of grey ashes, and salt from the tears held back.

Lawrence is slipping away. He’s going to leave him. Adam would peel his skin off piece by piece of it brought them closer together.

Lawrence isn’t afraid anymore. Or, yeah, he’s afraid, he’s absolutely fucking terrified in fact, but for once, it doesn’t matter. Their legs are tangled, just thin cotton as a final layer separating them, Adam’s lips are sliding across his, sloppily and messy and completely without friction, Lawrence’s hands climb down his body, his ribs, _he’s too thin, way too thin,_ and somewhere around there, Lawrence realizes that shit, he wants to have sex. This what it feels like.

He’s not sure how it’s meant to be done, what’s expected of him, and is more aware than ever that it’d be a terrible idea, but he doesn’t care, barely has a choice. It feels like when he hasn’t eaten in a whole day and realizes that there’s food at home. Like when his brain shuts down and everything is just _want,_ kind of stupid that he can’t control himself, that something as biological and simple as Adam’s hand on his thigh gets him all hot and vibrating inside out, in a way that’d make him embarrassed if he hadn’t known that Adam felt the same way, looking at him with black eyes, like when he’s angry.

It must show on his face. Adam pulls back, swallows.

“You nervous?” he mumbles. Lawrence nods.

“Yeah.”

“You want to wait?”

“No.”

Adam sighs, almost sounds dejected, and gets up. Lawrence stares at him with horror. For a brief second thinks he did something really wrong, like you’re actually supposed to say yes to that last question to act hard to get or whatever the hell they call it. Adam smiles, but doesn’t look happy at all.

“Just need to get some stuff,” he says, clearing his throat awkwardly. “It… doesn’t really work like in porn, sadly.”

Lawrence nods. He barely gets whether that last part was a joke. Adam goes into the bathroom and rummages around for something, before getting back with a box of condoms, and a tube of something that Lawrence doesn’t recognize. Adam wriggles back between his legs, Lawrence feels his erection against his stomach and presses his lips together to keep from moaning that way he’s heard mom do it, jesus, let’s hold on to some dignity. He didn’t realize how much colder the bed was without Adam until now that he’s back.

Adam puts a hand on his chest. Lawrence’s heart beats like he’s escaped from a crime scene and is finally safe.

“We’ll take it slow,” Adam says, can’t quite look at him but can’t really keep himself from it either. “Okay? It’ll be good. I promise.”

Lawrence nods. Total trust. Adam wants to die.

He’s on autopilot after that. Most responsibility is on him, after all, Adam doesn’t have it in him to teach Lawrence anything right now. In the back of his mind, the same voice he heard every time he was with a girl: _this is for the wrong reasons, it’s not supposed to be like this, it won’t help._ He ignores it just as much now as he did then.

Either way, this is all they’re going to get. It won’t be anything more after this.

Adam cuddles up with his head on Lawrence’s chest afterwards, in a way he never would’ve allowed himself if Lawrence hadn’t already been pretty much asleep. This is almost more intimate, the moments afterwards, and Adam really tries not to fall asleep, must keep this, this time he gets in Lawrence’s arms. The one fucking moment.

It’s going to be gone soon. Lawrence, his warmth. That weird softness in Adam’s chest that only he can bring out.

He looks up at Lawrence. His eyelids are half-closed.

He doesn’t say it.

This’ll make it hard enough as it is. Even now, when they’ve just said a fraction of what they should’ve said, Adam feels tears seeping out as he closes his eyes.

He tries to stay awake for as long as he can. A long, but way too short moment with his best friend and so much more. Slow, even breaths and a new day being painted along the horizon. He’s going to hold on to it as long as he can. It still won’t be enough.

 


	22. Regressing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the wait my dudes, but this is a Long One

Lawrence wakes up the next morning with a feeling similar to a smashing hangover, from Lou poking his cheek.

“Lawrence?” she says impatiently, and Lawrence blinks sleepily at the pale morning light. Not that there’s a lot of it. It’s been a while since the mornings started getting darker.

Lawrence puts a hand over his eyes. His brain feels like half-melted butter, the sound of Wendy handling the coffee maker sounds like two pot lids banging together. The events of last night should be permanently engraved into his mind, but he’s slept way too little, they slowly swim around in circles and he’s too tired to catch them.

What the fuck happened? Adam was mad… did he get him drunk? Did they fight? Or…

“Yeah?” he says, out of habit, when he realizes that Lou is still staring accusingly at him.

“Breakfast,” she says. Daniel’s standing next to her, saying nothing. He’s even less talkative than usual in the mornings.

“Right…” Lawrence grunts, rubbing his eyes.

He begins unwrapping himself from the covers, before realizing that he’s naked and pulling it back up, blushing all the way down his neck. Lou smiles ruefully.

“Why are you naked?”

Lawrence opens his mouth, scrambling his still half-melted brain for a good emergency lie, but he’s too busy trying to grasp what really happened yesterday too think of a fake version of it.

Adam was angry… and he pulled his hand away when Lawrence tried to touch him. Then…

Lawrence blushes even more when he remembers. It hits him like a slap in the face, even though it’s stupid, he should’ve gotten it right away.

Adam and he always sleep together, but never like this. Even if they hadn’t both been naked, something had been obviously different.

He still hasn’t said a word, much less moved, a few seconds later, when the coffee maker starts slurping and Wendy walks up to them. She’s only slept a few hours, looks more of a skeleton now than when she lived on the street. Lawrence feels guilty in that terrible way, even though he knows she’ll go to sleep when they’ve left for school, and despite that that’s a fraction of all the things he’s feeling right now.

“Sorry I didn’t wake you up sooner,” Wendy says, putting a hand on Lou’s shoulder. “I figured you needed a sleep-in, with the exams and…”

Then she sees Lawrence’s naked chest, his scarlet face. Adam’s arm around his waist and that other connection between them, the one that’s without touch.

“…Oh,” is all Wendy says. “So you really…”

Lawrence nods. For some reason, he just wants to cry.

“Yeah.”

Wendy nods, too. Even she blushes a little. They haven’t talked about sex much. It hasn’t been relevant.

Lawrence untangles from the covers, spots his boxers further away and reaches as far as he can without getting up. When they’re in place, he stands up. Adam moans softly and reaches his arm across Lawrence’s empty side of the bed. Lou looks between him and Lawrence, very frustrated, like always when things are kept secret from her.

“Lawrence, what did you do?” she asks angrily and follows him to the kitchen table. “What’d you do to Adam?”

Lawrence pretends not to hear her. Even if he wanted to, there’s no way in hell he could explain to her what happened.

Wendy smiles at Lou’s curiosity, but when she sees Lawrence’s face, she waits for the kids to start eating, and then pulls him aside. Lawrence can’t even look at her.

“What’s the matter?”

Lawrence looks at the ceiling, wrapping his arms around himself. His throat is burning, he feels the corners of his mouth being pulled down. If he’d known a childhood, he would’ve considered these tears to be childish, but now, they just feel stupid in general.

“Didn’t you want it?”

Lawrence usually appreciates her lilting patience, but things are too miserable for her to help. He nods frantically.

“Yeah, yeah, of course I did. But… like…”

He swallows hard, looking at his hands.

“I told him it’d make it harder for me to leave,” he mumbles. “I _told_ him.”

He can’t look at her. Knows that Wendy’s huge eyes are so full of sympathy that he couldn’t stand it, so he keeps looking at his scraped-up, stinging hands.

xxxxxxxxx

Adam isn’t sure what he expected. If the only downfall they’ve had happened after they’d kissed, of course it’d get worse after they fucked.

They talk about it later in the day. Lou and Daniel are sitting with a library textbook, and as they stutter through words, Lawrence says that leaving Adam will be hell as it is. What they did (that’s how he says it) won’t make it easier, they need to get better at controlling themselves. When Adam says that him leaving will be hell no matter what they do, Lawrence tears up, and Adam gives up, holds Lawrence tight and rocks him back and forth like a baby because he knows that he needs it. So goddamn supportive even though there’s a part of him that hates him right now.

As much as he hates himself. Because that thought won’t leave him, no matter how bad he wants Lawrence to succeed.

 _Well, you don’t_ have _to go,_ do you?

He knows that’s not true. But he can’t think like that anymore. He was so comfortable in being happy for once, and it’s going away.

He eventually realizes that Lawrence is looking at him, almost accusingly. As per usual, he’s in desperate need of something that Adam doesn’t even have enough of to last himself, but that Lawrence still needs it more than he does.

“We’ll figure this out,” he eventually says and puts an awkward hand on Lawrence’s arm. “Don’t worry about it.”

His brain feels like a wringed-out sponge. He barely has the energy to lie even though it’s all he’s ever done.

Lawrence can’t tell that he’s pretending, or he doesn’t want to hear. He smiles, relieved, wiping his eyes again.

“Thanks.”

Adam smiles back. Then he turns to the TV, mostly because he doesn’t want to keep talking, but doesn’t want to leave either. If the time they have left is limited, he’ll gladly sit here watching kid’s shows for the rest of the day as long as Lawrence is sitting next to him.

It shouldn’t be a problem. Now that it’s happening. He should’ve known better than hoping that this would last.

He spends the day pretending, even though he doesn’t have it in him. He pretends to want to help Lawrence study. He pretends that he still wants to be near him even though he wants to punch him in the face, and then realizes that he still wants that, too, and then he wants to hit himself in the head with the heavy textbook on the kitchen table.

He rarely gets to say no to stuff, even if he doesn’t want them. It’s really only a question of weather or not they make him physically collapse pr not.

But no way he’s going to be the only one missing the other. Not when Lawrence runs off being happy somewhere else.

xxxxxxxxx

It’s so much easier this way. He’s missed it. Lawrence turned him into something he wasn’t, and the real him is on the up and up.

Adam regresses. The evil genie returns. He thought it went away when he left home, but now it’s back and it’s not just stationed in his belly, giggling when he does something bad; it’s under his skin. It’s controlling his actions and he makes no effort to stop it.

Not even for Lawrence. Especially not for Lawrence.

Adam cuts classes. He hasn’t missed a day in school since Lawrence moved in with him, but why would he go there when it’s so much more fun to get plastered and spend the next day sleeping it off?

Why would he stay home and take care of Lawrence when he can huff in the car of someone he doesn’t know and then fall asleep on top of a girl he knows even less?

Why did he ever stop doing this at all? It’s the best thing he knows, the only thing he’s good at.

“You’re throwing away everything we worked for,” Lawrence says.

“Break that stupid fucking check he got,” the genie says.

“I’m not leaving _you,”_ Lawrence says.

“Bring some hammered girl over when he’s home,” the genie says.

Then it cackles.

Lawrence already has a sleeping disorder, and he’s spent nights up with Adam to study. He wants Adam to make it almost as bad as he wants himself to. Adam knows all this. It’s half the reason he does it.

Lawrence’s disappointment feeds him. That unhappy look he gets before the classroom door closes when Adam gets sent to Mr. Peters’ office again. That bitter rush it gives him is the closest thing to joy he gets after their night together.

And if he let some real emotions in, there’s a risk of him banging his head through a wall or put his hand in a blender.

xxxxxxxxx

Adam still has bruises on his knuckles since he punched the wall that night, and they’ve gotten this weird, smushed-flat shaped. It hurts when he makes a fist. But he still yanks his hand away when Lawrence tries to look at it.

“If something’s broken, it needs to be taken care of right away,” Lawrence says. He sounds a little hysterical in the meantime as he’s all factual, it’s a kind of funny. “It’ll heal wrong.”

Adam doesn’t mind him.

“If you don’t get it fixed, it’ll stay that way,” Lawrence says. “You won’t be able to make a fist again.”

“You wouldn’t know any of this if I hadn’t bought you that fucking medical book,” Adam says.

Lawrence doesn’t bring it up again.

xxxxxxxxx

The leaves are changing color one of the many days Adam is late for school.

Lunch has just gotten started. Adam’s head is throbbing, tongue like sandpaper from last night at the junkyard. The place that used to be sacred to him is now just another spot he goes to feeling nothing and leaves feeling exactly the same.

He enters the cafeteria with a cigarette dangling from his upper lip, subconsciously scanning for Lawrence and eventually finds him. He’s sitting with some of the Ambitious Children, and he looks up when Adam walks in, but quickly down again. He’s probably pissed at Adam for being out late last night, but Adam doesn’t care, because he still got to sleep with him when he came home.

The fact that no matter how disappointed Lawrence is, and no matter how drunk Adam is when he gets home, he still gets to crawl down next to him, fall asleep tired and beat up, engulfed in his warmth, is one of the few good things he’s got left.

Adam lights his cigarette and looks through the cafeteria again. He’s not sure what it is, maybe it’s Lawrence’s turned-away gaze, maybe the unbearable itch under his skin, but when he sees The Cool Ones, he walks straight up at them, swaying his hips, eyes wide. He probably looks like most teenage girls do in their instagram pictures.

The Cool Ones look up when he’s in front of him. The important part of this table is that there’s diversity; despite what high school movies like to pretend, it’s been long since all the popular kids were supposed to be the same. The group Adam’s facing consists of two jocks, two nice rich boys, a good rich girl, a slutty rich girl, a poetic girl wearing Doc Martens and a hat, and a freshman who’s so incredibly grateful that he gets to sit with them.

They hate each other, but feeds off each other. When you can’t stand your own company, you have to hang out with other people you can’t stand. Adam knows; he does it himself when he’s not with Lawrence.

The jocks flex their biceps, probably not even aware of it, and Adam grins. They’ve known each other a long time. Their necks are about as wide as his waist, and they’ve both beat him up before. The others smile politely.

“Hi, Adam,” the loose rich girl says. “What’s up?”

“Great. Or, the AIDS hasn’t killed me yet.”

He tilts his head and eyes one of the jocks.

“You wanna change that, pretty boy?”

The jock looks at his friends, they both laugh in that knowing way, and looks at Adam again.

“Dude, we worked out this morning,” one of them says. His name is possibly Luke. “We don’t need to kicks your ass right now, but when we’re in the mood, you’ll be the first to know.”

Adam keeps smiling, puckers his lips a bit and leans against a chair in front of him. Stretches so that his tee tightens around his chest. _On display._

Luke looks amused at first, then he gets pale. He looks at his friend, then at Adam. The loose girl laughs. She sounds panicked.

“Like, do you even get how pathetic you are?” she says. “Can’t you just crawl back to your fucking hole? You really gotta come here and kill everyone’s vibe?”

Adam doesn’t mind her. He has to go for someone stronger. Luke doesn’t seem to want to start anything at all, he and the other jock are looking at each other like they’re trying to telepathically decide what to do.

They’re not used to this. Adam’s made fun of them before, but that’s when they’ve already grabbed him by the collar and pushed him up against the bathroom wall. He hasn’t gone up to them to start a fight, because he knows how that’d end.

Eventually, they get up anyway. They have to. Luke walks up to Adam, standing that way with his arms hanging far away from his sides, trying to make himself look as big as possible.

“Watch your _fucking_ mouth,” he hisses. Adam keeps grinning.

“Don’t worry, you’re not going to hurt me. I’m pretty loose by now.”

The fist hits his face, Adam’s cigarette spins through the air. Because he is one of those people. Luke has to hit him, but judging by the little Adam manages to see of his face, he doesn’t seem to get what it is he’s doing, and Adam can’t blame him.

He usually fights back, even if it’s against someone twice his size. Now he just stands there, taking it.

The buzz in the cafeteria doesn’t die down at the first blow. Not the second one either, but the third time Adam’s head jerks back and he still makes no sign of defense, the room goes quiet. The only sound is the sickly, dull noise of flesh against flesh.

Hot pain spreads through Adam’s face, he swears he can hear his nose creak when Luke strikes him again, his head snaps to the left and he sees The Cool Ones in a weird angle, like he’s laying on his side.

Another blow, blood starts gushing from his nose. Adam closes his eyes, white stars dancing. Genie laughing.

 _Keep it up,_ Adam thinks, Luke hits him in the eye, it feels like it’s being pressed into his head. _Hit me. You want it. I’m a little fag fuck, fucking little monster, you hate me, hit me._

Cold knowledge.

_I’m so fucking useless. You hate me and I deserve it._

Just when it feels like his head is about to split in halves, in the middle of the deafening silence, someone cries out.

_“Stop!”_

The whole world seems to have gone crooked, Adam’s not sure which way he should lean in order to straighten up. When he finally manages to open his eyes, everything’s swaying, only a few things discernable. Staring faces from the cafeteria chairs. Luke in front of him with blood on his shirt, still not sure what he’s doing and why. Even more blood, Adam’s blood, sprayed on the floor.

And Lawrence, in the middle of it all. Wide eyes, clutching to the book he’s bringing to the next class. Adam wants to keep thinking like this, _a little too real for you now, isn’t it?_ But he can’t.

He’s not sure what happens right afterwards. He probably doesn’t pass out, it’s more like watching a movie rewind, sort of getting the plot, but not the context. Something about Lawrence grabbing his hand and leading him somewhere. Hard floor under his feet. Everything spinning.

All he knows is that Lawrence is worried about him. It makes all of this worth it.

When the world slows down and everything falls into place, Adam’s in the men’s room, sitting on a closed lid. The smell of urine pricks at his nose, keeping him here, and Lawrence is kneeling in front of him. He seems to have gotten supplies from the nurse’s office, bandages and tape lay scattered across the floor next to him, like Lawrence was in a hurry.

He’s tending to his wounds. His hands on Adam’s face, so close that he feels his breath on his skin, and it’s one of those moments that Adam would consider _so close,_ but not even he can think of it like that when he sees Lawrence, the look on his face.

He doesn’t even look disappointed. Just sad.

Adam sighs theatrically to show that he’s alive. Lawrence doesn’t look up. He wipes the blood from Adam’s nose, his movements stiff, almost rough, and not even when he grazes a bruise on Adam’s chin and makes him curse softly with pain, does he look him in the eye.

Adam tries to wait it out, knows that Lawrence’s anger will fade eventually, it always does, but the evil genie doesn’t want that.

“Am I a good guinea pig?”

Lawrence looks up.

“What?”

“I assume this is just practice,” Adam says. “For doctoring and whatnot. Because everything we do is for practice, right? Like, rehearsal until something more important comes along?”

The little sense he has left wonders what the fuck he’s doing, but it’s too late. Lawrence’s eyes narrow, and he tosses the cotton ball hard to the side. Adam expects him to storm out, but he immediately picks a new one off the floor, soaks it with alcohol to clean a small cut, probably from Luke’s thumb nail, above Adam’s eye.

Adam struggles to stay quiet until Lawrence is finished and puts the last bloody cotton ball aside. Who knows what the genie would make him say if he opened his mouth again. Lawrence doesn’t seem to appreciate his efforts. He won’t even look at him.

“We’ll have to chill your eye later,” he says. “We’ve got ice at home?”

“I think so,” Adam says quietly.

Lawrence nods, seems to do his best to stay _rational_ but gives up, putting a hand over his eyes. Adam’s hands lie in his lap, completely useless. Not even the genie in his chest anymore. Just the stupid fucking guilt.

Lawrence removes his hand and looks at him again.

“Adam,” he says, leaning forward. “You know how… Adam,” he repeats when Adam looks at the floor. “You really think that… if this is how you’ll act once I’m gone, you really think I’ll be _able_ to go?”

Adam looks down again. Doesn’t even try to think of an answer.

“You’re not giving me a _choice,”_ Lawrence says, borderline desperately. “If you’re going to… okay, you know what, fuck it. I’m not going anywhere, I’m staying right here.”

He gets up. Adam keeps looking at the floor.

He’s wanted Lawrence to say that ever since he got that stupid scholarship. He didn’t think it’d feel like this once he actually did.

Adam remains there, staring blankly for a few minutes. Then he gets up and walks out.

Okay, he got what he wanted. Why does it feel like this? Adam swings the doors to the school open and hauls his last cigarettes out of his pocket.

Fucking Lawrence. He’s the only one that can do this. Even if Adam can’t be happy about what he said, at least the genie should be. That profusely frustrated look on Lawrence’s face is the stuff it usually likes. Especially if it’s topped off with some genuine sorrow.

No one’s giggling in his chest. It hasn’t felt this empty for a long time, even.

Adam stops in his tracks across the schoolyard, collapses on a bench and rubs his hands over his face with a sigh. The wounds on his face sting. There are no other students around him, classes have started, but even if there were, he couldn’t hold this back.

 _Lawrence_ is leaving _him._ That’s the case, no matter what he says. It shouldn’t feel this way for _Adam._ It shouldn’t matter that they happen to have fucked.

He drops his hands in his lap, sighing again. Then he takes out his phone, checking his bank account. He’s going to have to cut back on the smokes this month, and probably the food, too, but what the hell. Priorities.

He starts walking towards the gates again, but then he turns around and goes back to school. He still has math before the day is up.

He doesn’t want to piss Lawrence off even more. And Lawrence wouldn’t care if Adam had just gone on a killing spree with a semi automatic; he’d still get disappointed if he cut.

xxxxxxxxx

They’ve walked home together for two years. This is the first day in that entire time that Lawrence slings his bag over his shoulder walking out of the classroom, without even checking if Adam follows.

He hates him. He managed to take his mind off of it during class, but it’s there now, a heavy, grey stone where his happiness should be.

It doesn’t seem like Adam follows. And even though Lawrence doesn’t _want_ to be with him right now, his eyes start to sting, kept it under a lid for the whole class, but he should be able to keep it up until he gets back home. It feels like he’s done nothing but bawl lately, and let’s keep some fucking boundaries, he can’t be crying all the time when he’s a…

Right. He’s not going to be a doctor anymore.

He actually managed to stay calm for the entire walk home, but the second he enters the apartment, Lou tears her eyes off the TV and asks him why he’s sad. Lawrence says it’s nothing, because that’s what he has to say, but then he lifts her onto his lap and cries in front of some stupid kid’s show, and ignores her every time she asks why.

When Adam gets home, around dinnertime, Lawrence has tried so hard not to think about him through the afternoon that he almost forgot he exists. He’s also told Wendy that they’ve had a fight and what about, so she gives Adam a dark glance when he walks in. Adam’s face is flushed, heavy breaths, like he ran the whole way. It looks like he’s hiding something behind his back.

“Hey,” he pants, puts his Something down behind his legs and takes his jacket off. “There any food left?”

Lawrence shakes his head.

“I didn’t know if you were coming. Sorry.”

Adam nods.

“It’s fine. I’ll fix something up. But…”

He quiets, looks down. Opens his mouth, but Lou beats him to it.

“What’d you do to your face?” she asks, visibly shaken. Adam smiles patiently.

“I got in a fight with a bear. But guys,” he says, leaning against the back of Lou’s chair, “you wanna watch something that Lawrence doesn’t want you to while we have a chat?”

Daniel glances Lawrence uncertainly. Lou’s eyes widen.

“Like what?” she asks breathlessly. Adam pretends to ponder it.

“The Simpsons?” he then says, Lou squeaks and rushes to the mattress in front of the tiny TV. Daniel follows after Lawrence’s nodded approval.

Adam smiles warmly aft them for a moment before he turns to Lawrence. He loves them, he always has, and saved both their lives. The tears that were running out are welling up again, Lawrence swallows.

“Wendy,” Adam says. “Could you… give us a moment?”

“Cause that usually ends fucking fantastic,” Wendy hisses.

Lawrence stares at the table, hates when they fight, but can still see how Adam meets her gaze with the one he usually saved for Claire, back when he hated her.

“Yeah, it’s great how you support him all the way and are all around _fucking_ better than I am,” Adam says. “But I’m trying to do something right here. So could you let us talk?”

Wendy keeps glaring at him for a bit, before getting up and sitting down with the kids. Adam takes a breath and looks at Lawrence, almost imploringly, like he’s asking for permission. Lawrence says nothing, and Adam sits down on Wendy’s chair, leans forward, looking him in the eye. But he doesn’t seem sure of what he should say.

“It’s not like… I don’t… support you, and I don’t want you to think… shit, this sounded much better when I practiced on the way over. I don’t want you to…”

He quiets down again, lowers the hand he had raised in some kind of undetermined gesture, rolls his eyes at his own nervousness and takes out the paper bag he kept hidden under the table.

“Here,” he says, almost throwing it at Lawrence. “Open the damn thing.”

Lawrence looks from him to the bag, before Adam beckons to it impatiently, and Lawrence opens it, looking inside. In the bag are two pairs of new, faded jeans, five or six pairs of socks, and in the bottom, so small that Lawrence almost misses it, a pair of nail clippers.

He looks at Adam. Then back into the bag. Adam waits for a reaction, looks uncomfortable, almost ashamed, but Lawrence isn’t sure what he’s supposed to do.

“For me?” he finally gets out.

“Yeah,” Adam says. “You know when we first met, and you didn’t have any nail clippers so you wore them down and shit… and you don’t have any nails anymore cause you keep biting them, but I figured… and-and you only have one pair of good pants, and they’re all shredded because you got them when you were thirteen or something, so I figured you needed new ones. And you keep losing your socks, and… now that you’re leaving for Canada you have to look like a _respectable young man,_ and I won’t be there to buy you shit, so I figured it was better if you got them now. So they won’t send you home for looking like white trash.”

Lawrence smiles, looking at Adam, who’s looking at his hands, twisting nervously in his lap. He talks like he’s scared of what Lawrence will say if he gets a word in.

“I planned to give you one of them surgical textbooks, because I guess you need that more than the medical thing you got junior year, but I ran all across the goddamn town looking for a place where you don’t have to order it like a month ahead, and didn’t find it. Then I thought of the jeans thing, but I didn’t know your size… I even called Claire asking her to help.”

Lawrence squeezes the bag in his hands. He’s not sure what to do with all this subtext.

There’s a break as Adam gather courage. When he speaks up again, it’s softer.

“You know what I’m like,” he mumbles. “Between now and you leaving, I’ll have like a thousand breakdowns and whine about you abandoning me and whatnot. And I want you to stay, I really do, but when… when I’m having those phases, could you try to remember that no matter what stupid shit I do… I want you to be happy. You know? Deep down.”

Lawrence smiles again.

“Way deep down.”

“The deepest down, like, you can’t even see it.”

They’re quiet for a bit. Then Adam looks up again, and Lawrence gets warm inside in that aching way that he’s going to get more and more often looking at him from now on.

They’re going to do what they always do, because they have to. When Lawrence feels how much that thought hurts, he smiles miserably and shakes his head.

“Adam, I told you it’d make it harder for me to go,” he says quietly.

Adam nods, biting his lip.

“You’re always right. You wish we hadn’t… you know…”

Lawrence thinks for a moment. Then he shakes his head with the smallest motion possible.

“No,” he says. “I mean… no, I don’t wish we hadn’t… I don’t regret it.”

Adam nods. It seems like it was the only thing he needed to hear in order to live with this.

“Good.”

Then they grin stupidly at each other, Lawrence puts an arm around his neck and hugs him tight, inhaling leather and sweat.


	23. Becoming a Believer

“Joey and Chandler seem super gay, don’t they?” Adam says one night, watching reruns of Friends after spending the day looking for Christmas decorations that won’t completely fuck their budget.

“What’s a gay?” Daniel asks, and Lawrence smiles, blushing slightly.

“That’s a different discussion. And Joey sleeps around like nobody’s business, but just with girls,” he adds, when Adam seems about to explain the concept of sexuality to his six year old brother.

“He’s overcompensating,” Adam says doubtlessly. “Seriously, look at them.”

Wendy shakes her head, pursing her lips.

“They’re not gay. I mean, they totally bang when Monica’s not around, but that doesn’t mean they’re gay. They just love each other so much that it’s like… on every level. Like, deeper than friendship. But that doesn’t make them gay.”

Lawrence scowls and shifts in his seat.

“You know Chandler marries Monica, right? They even move away from Joey in the final season.”

Adam hasn’t commented on anything Wendy’s said. She probably notices how uncomfortable he is, and that’s probably why she keeps talking.

“Doesn’t mean they’re not totally in love,” she says, looking at Lawrence. “Any idiot could tell. They just know that the time they got together was awesome enough as it is. Even though they don’t want it to end, they already got so much together, and no one can take that away from them.”

Lawrence doesn’t answer. Even Lou’s started looking back and forth between him and Adam, at his now scarlet face and Adam’s stubbornly turned-away eyes. But no one says a word.

xxxxxxxxx

Christmas comes along, like every year before, and still totally different. Adam wouldn’t have minded just skipping the whole thing, but he doesn’t even mention that to Lawrence. There’s no point. Lawrence has lived a life without traditions, and now that he’s stable enough to keep them, he wouldn’t let them go no matter who asked him.

Adam plays along. He buys everyone gifts. They can’t afford a Christmas ham, and even if they did they wouldn’t know how to make it, but a rotisserie chicken works just fine. When Adam gets home, the place is toasty, and even though there’s a part of him that’d rather be anywhere but here, that part gets brutally down-voted when he sees Lawrence’s smile and Lou running around with bows in her hair.

 _“Food!”_ Lawrence exclaims, walks up to Adam and yanks the paper bag from his hands. “Oh, and hi, Adam.”

“You only want me for my chicken,” Adam says, taking his jacket off, snowflakes on the fabric melt to beads of water.

“Yeah, or, you’re okay, too,” Lawrence says, sticking his face into the bag. “God, this is gonna be great…”

Then he runs off to find a clean plate, reaching across Wendy trying to show Lou and Daniel how to put the mini muffins they bought in concentric circles.

It should be all he needs for a perfect night. Adam’s surrounded with people he loves, the _only_ ones he loves, and they’re overjoyed. Lawrence, who usually looks thirty-five instead of seventeen, laughs as if he’s an actual teenager.

And Lou is happy. Adam literally gets warm inside when he sees her grab Daniel’s hand and bounce around, spin in dance. When they open their presents, and Daniel is so grateful for the book _Matilda_ that he wraps his slim little arms around Adam’s neck, Adam has to work not to break down bawling into his ash-blond hair.

The night’s perfect, beginning to end. It feels like the apartment is their own little bubble, everything bad stays outside, it can’t reach them here. That’s what makes it even harder.

He can’t do this. It hurts too much. But he does it anyway.

If it made Lawrence happy, he’d grab his camera and chuck it out the window.

Eventually, the kids are asleep, Wendy’s left for work and Adam and Lawrence remain, as usual, around the kitchen table, too beat to take care of the dishes. Usually this’d be when they had one of those Talks, but those are rare these days, and Lawrence doesn’t really seem to be in the mood. He’s too happy, and Adam’s the opposite. He won’t be able to open his mouth without tearing up.

Adam’s put his feet up on Wendy’s empty chair, and Lawrence picks his teeth with the little that’s left of his thumbnail. The food settles comfortably in Adam’s stomach, even though he usually doesn’t like eating. The anxiety’s on the outside tonight.

“Remember…” he eventually says. “That first Christmas we were together?”

Lawrence smiles wearily and looks at the table surface.

“That was the one with the egg cartons, right?”

“Yeah,” Adam says, smiling also. “And your mom got fucked off with me.”

Lawrence cracks up.

“I still have that textbook. I don’t get most of what it says, but....”

“Of course you don’t,” Adam says. “The important thing is that you hold on to it, because it was expensive.”

The breath forming a white cloud in front of their faces as they sat on the step in the hallway. One hand frozen solid, the other warm as they shared Adam’s gloves. And the simple fact that this was his first Christmas feeling like Christmas.

That night. And how they won’t be together by this time next year.

When Lawrence notices Adam’s nervous fidgeting with his sleeves, he leans across the table and puts a hand over Adam’s closed fist, the one still bearing scars from the night when all this shit got started. Adam’s first reaction is to pull it back, but he can’t, of course he can’t, so he just sits there.

xxxxxxxxx

Adam almost longs for school to start again. If it weren’t for Lawrence, he wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the days following Christmas and the other ones.

Even Lawrence relaxes over the rest of their break, his sudden calm makes him an even more obvious center of the family than usual. The fake smile he usually uses to cover up an inner chaos turns into genuine happiness. Instead of helping Lou and Daniel with their studies because he has to, he does so because he wants to, pushes them harder with their work but still always finds time to play with them.

“You remember the pills today?” Adam asks as they’re having breakfast the day before New Years Eve. For someone so organized, Lawrence is very forgetful when it comes to his own health.

“I don’t need them now,” Lawrence says, smiling.

Adam smiles back, even though the answer shoots a heavy, black bead of self-hatred through his chest.

Lawrence has started planning for the transfer now, it takes almost as much of his time as school used to. It probably wouldn’t be that consuming if he didn’t make it that way, he doesn’t stop planning for stupid stuff like eating, Adam has to put a plate down next to him while he goes through the fucking documents he printed at the fucking library and fucking travel agencies and _how much do you even have to think about when school pays for the whole thing?_

“The student loan covers an apartment on campus,” Lawrence says with his mouth full of ham sandwich. Adam’s pretty certain he’s talking to himself, but still sits down on the other side of the table, to make Lawrence look less schizo. “So I don’t have to worry about that. Peters said that when they see my grades and hear about my situation, they’ll probably pay for Lou and Daniel’s flight tickets, but I should put money away for that, too, just in case, and if they do cover them, I’ll have more money to spend when I get there, and I’ll need that, jesus… and the textbooks, but I think they have a fund for that. Or, do they? They’re conservative in Canada now, aren’t they? I’ll have to call and ask. Maybe Peters knows. And I won’t have to buy the medical journal.”

At that last statement, he actually looks up, at Adam, a smile at the corner of his mouth. Adam can sincerely smile back, for a change.

Lawrence knows he’ll get a complete list of the textbooks required at the end of the semester, but he’s enjoying himself. This makes him happy. This planning gives him a kind of perverse kick, like criminals who’ve thought of a foolproof escape plan, and Adam does his best not to ruin it.

He doesn’t even use the same pacifier-like defense mechanisms that he did when Lawrence first told him about the scholarship. He doesn’t stay out all night, he doesn’t get hammered. Lawrence would get disappointed, and probably unable to go, so Adam doesn’t. He behaves. Outwards, at least.

Lawrence really knows him well enough to hear how he’s doing from the way he slams the door. Adam doesn’t blame him if he’s faking it. He has to start pushing Lawrence away sooner or later, might as well start now. He was never the center of his world, not the way Lawrence is to him. And if he pretends enough, he can see even Lawrence’s love as the kind he can just shrug off.

Adam goes out one night, alone. He doesn’t want Lawrence with him right now. He can usually push it away, all the annoying, incoherent anxiety buzzing through his head, but not tonight, and he wants to be alone until he’s figured it out. Or at least calmed down enough to repress it again.

He’s sitting in his holy junkyard. There are not a lot of people here now, no matter how much you hate your family, they’re usually better than being outside when it’s this cold. Adam’s sitting alone on a blue car hood, and there’s a faint but angry conversation in the car next to him. He still loves being here, even though he’s got a warm place to sleep now. No one’s going to kick his ass when he gets home.

He hasn’t talked to anyone in his family since he left, except Claire. Mom tried calling him a few weeks afterwards, but he hadn’t been able to say anything. Didn’t really get what she expected from him. He heard her excuses from the phone, but all he could think was _well, you had six fucking years to say this, didn’t you._ But what the hell. He was mostly grateful that dad hadn’t tried to track him down.

Adam hasn’t thought much about what his life was before he moved out. He hopes it’ll all turn out to be a bad dream, something he can wake up from with Lawrence’s arm around his waist.

He doesn’t hope it’ll turn out he has a different family, though. No one else would’ve handled him better than his parents did.

Now, that Adam’s sitting on the rusty wreck of a car and doesn’t have anything to distract him, he remembers what it was like. Not before he left, but before everything.

His sexuality is such a stupid hang-up. It shouldn’t matter to anyone but himself. But he remembers the years before, mom shaking her head at him and Claire playing video games, Claire getting so angry when he won again that her face turned scarlet.

Dad picking him up, spinning him around. He remembers looking down at dad’s face, and he knows, he _knows_ that the creases were fewer, silver patches of his hair thinner, and his eyes not nearly as… _tormented_ as they were after he told them.

The thought is like a fist in his gut, Adam feels his hands clenching in his pockets. There’s a sting in the knuckles he used to hit the wall.

Lawrence is so eager to get out. Leave it all. His entire life here.

It’s happening again. That bad thing inside him ruins everything, everything he managed to build up. The tiny, tiny element of joy after not having a home in six years. Adam slides off the hood, collapsing on the ground. His hands are shaking. He’s frozen inside.

The thought that initially struck the breath out of him now slowly sinks in, makes a home inside. In Adam’s self-loathing heart, which is about to get a big chunk of itself torn off, it makes total sense.

_He would’ve stayed if it weren’t for you._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you think this chapter is a reflection of my real thoughts on Friends, you are absolutely fucking right.


	24. When ET Gets Sick

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can I just say that the fact that I've gotten these nice comments recently is the writer's equivalence of drinking a perfectly tempered hot chocolate under a blanket on a snowy winter day
> 
> I love the hell out of you all <3

Adam’s too thin. His tees are always hanging too loose on his frame. Now that he’s doing the dishes, head bent, the collar hangs low.

Lawrence is sitting on the mattress, a few feet away, can still discern his spine on the back of his neck, little bumps under the skin.

He should be worried. Adam eats too little, he knows that, has always been worried that he does it because he thinks it’s more important that the food they can afford goes to Lawrence and the kids. But there are times like these. Lawrence sees the gap of pale skin between his t-shirt and the ruffled, soft hair. Adam.

He knows what this can lead to. Everything’s different now. There was a time when he could touch Adam, and Adam wasn’t a fan of it, but it was fine. They were so used to balancing on the edge between just friends and not just friends.

Lawrence gets up, walks up to him. Either Adam doesn’t notice or he pretends not to. Lawrence isn’t sure which one of those options he likes the least.

He puts his hand on the back of Adam’s neck, stroking his thumb over the skin. A brief second of intense heat until Adam growls something, shoots him a glance. Lawrence takes his hand away.

xxxxxxxxx

Lawrence doesn’t get what’s wrong with them, with himself. Normal people wouldn’t have noted these things. People who have normal relationships to each other don’t take note of the other one sitting on the couch differently.

It would’ve been much easier to be happy about college that way. But they are the way they are, and he can’t be happy when Adam isn’t. That look when Lawrence touches him.

“You’ve seen ET, right?” Lawrence says. “You know when they synch up with each other? The kid gets sick when ET gets sick?”

Adam smiles thinly.

“We’re a bit like that.”

Lawrence smiles back.

“We are.”

If Adam got what he implied with that, he doesn’t show it. Not that night, or any of the other nights they could’ve talked about what was going on. Lawrence is usually the one to start those talks, but he’s busy. He expands his scholarship, he saves up for flight tickets, sends emails to Canada from Adam’s computer. Adam doesn’t bring it up, of course. It annoys Lawrence even more. He wants to pick him up and shake him.

Or kiss him. Hug him until his goddamn ribs crack, if that’s the only way to make him get it.

This stupid fucking connection between them. Like a rubber band pulling him back, no matter how much he tries to walk the other way. It might’ve been what kept him alive thus far, but it’s going to kill him soon. He wants to kill himself every time he sees Adam have that expression on his face, the one he shouldn’t have to have anymore.

Like he’s still that unloved little kid without any home to go to.

xxxxxxxxx

The snow is melting when Lawrence and Wendy are out walking.

It’s been a while since they did. In a way, it feels familiar, in another way, totally new. This is how they grew up, side by side across the factory yards, or along the boardwalk, if they had it in them to walk there, or sneak onboard the subway. But that was before they had nice neighborhoods to walk in, and before Lawrence had Adam to walk with.

It’s like coming back to your childhood home and find that someone’s painted the front door in a weird color.

“How you holding up?” Wendy asks, when they’ve walked so far that they’re actually back in their old blocks, now walking across a bridge.

There’s a canal running beneath them, filthy water and old plastic cups floating around sleepily. Lawrence remembers what it was like walking across this bridge when he was ten and he and Wendy had just started hanging out. This brown, slow-moving water had been the wildest thing he’d ever seen, the bridge an enormous arch. And they shouldn’t be up here, absolutely not, they could fall in and drown. But they went here anyway.

“I’m good,” Lawrence says. “I don’t think it’s… come to me yet. I just try to keep everything up so I don’t have to think about it.”

They stop at the top of the bridge, looking down at the water.

“I thought you’da gotten a breakdown at this point,” she says, dangling her arms over the rusty railing.

Lawrence smiles. He already feels it stiffening, more plastic.

“Me too. It’ll probably all crash down once I’m on the plane.”

“Probably. But Lou and Daniel seem cool about it.”

“Yeah,” Lawrence says, leaning his arms against the rail. “They’re really hyped on starting school… but I don’t think they’ve gotten yet that Adam’s not coming with us.”

Wendy turns to him.

“You told them?”

“Of course I have,” Lawrence says, looking firmly at the water. “I’ve tried to. Bunch of times. Lou nods along and says okay, Daniel looks kinda sad… then I try talking to them about moving, and they ask where Adam’s going to stay in Canada and if he’s going to my school, too.”

Wendy keeps her gaze on him for a bit, before turning back to the water. Then she sighs.

“They’ll be fine as long as you’re there,” she says, determined. “But it’ll probably be harder for them to not have Adam there than not having me.”

Her last words are like a punch to the gut. Lawrence jerks his head to her. He shouldn’t be upset. She must’ve said something other than what he heard.

“What?”

Wendy turns to him, wide-eyed, like she doesn’t get how he’s this surprised.

“What?” she echoes.

Lawrence can’t really formulate himself. She should get what he’s saying. She should get how absurd the idea is that he’s moving, to another fucking _country,_ and that she’s not coming with him.

“Y-you’re not coming?” he stammers, doesn’t notice how tight he’s suddenly holding the rail. “You’re staying? Here?”

Wendy tilts her head, looking at him from under furrowed brows. She usually accepts his emotions, even if she doesn’t understand them, but this seems to be something they can’t meet halfway over. She sees no possibility of her going with him, and he can’t even imagine being there without her.

“I _can’t_ come,” she says, putting an uncertain hand on his arm. “Lawrence, you’ve stretched the scholarship as much as you can to get the _kids_ to come, and it’s not like we have fucking savings to…”

Her voice fades when she sees the way Lawrence looks at her. Like she’s someone else. Her role as the constant safe space is shaken to him, even though she’s saying something he already knew.

It’s now that it actually reaches him, a cold hand around his heart, and Lawrence is spasmodically holding to the railing to even stay on his feet.

He knew Wendy couldn’t come with him. Somewhere, he knew, but he can’t go without her. Just the thought makes the cold hand clutch harder to his chest.

And the thought of going without Adam can’t be considered. It’s too much.

“But you… you have to come!” he cries out, he doesn’t even want to know how he looks right now, her face reflects his own so well that he’d rather forget even seeing it. “I’m going to _Canada!_ How am I supposed to… without you and-and Ada…”

He shuts up abruptly, can’t even say the fucking name, turns away. Forces his eyes open to see. But nothing seems real.

His hands ball up on the rail, trembling, scraping old paint from cold steel. He doesn’t want to cry in front of her, even though he’s done it thousands of times, it’s bad enough as it is. Seeing those huge brown eyes look at him with concern and know that they’re only going to be with him a few more months.

She’s never going to have to deal with this, the feeling of your entire life uprooting because of a stupid fucking check you get from your principal. A childhood you never got, but you got something else, with her, that was almost as well.

Everything you leave behind. It’s not until now that Lawrence realizes that it won’t necessarily be better where he’s headed. Not better than this, all the time he got with her, all the time they could’ve had.

“Lawrence,” Wendy says, moving closer. “You’ve wanted to get out of here… since you were, like, _twelve._ And you knew that when you left you’d have to leave it all. Why… I really don’t get how it can be so hard now.”

Lawrence can’t answer her. Wendy stays arm’s length away for a moment, before walking up to him, wrapping her arms around his neck and burying her face in his collar, Lawrence realizes that he’s shaking, fingertips scratching across his scalp. No fingernails left. Cold outside, cold inside.

He looks into the water. He tries to feel the same thing now that he did when they went here as kids, the brown swirls, twisting mercilessly with latte-colored foam floating on the waves.

All he sees is pollution.

xxxxxxxxx

He has no idea how long they stay there. Wendy doesn’t say a word about going home, even when it gets dark, cold creeps in under thin jackets. Lawrence keeps staring at the water. Now that it’s dark, it looks pitch black.

Eventually, Wendy lifts her head. Her face is right next to his, nose grazing his cheek. It feels very distant that he once was so terribly in love with her.

“Lawrence,” she says. She suddenly sounds determined, almost annoyed, but still somehow manages to maintain a tone like they’re lying in each other’s arms in the back of that car wreck a thousand years ago. “You can’t think like this when you leave.”

Lawrence swallows.

“I know.”

“Seriously,” Wendy says. “Now, being sad _now_ is fine, but like… you’ve been working too hard for this for you to…”

She sighs. Lawrence wants her to stop talking.

“You get so fucking sentimental,” she then says. “You’re going to go away and all of us who… love you are going to want you to go, but you’re going to sit on that plane and think you’re letting us down.”

Lawrence draws a pretty rough hand across his cheek. Wendy seems to be about to say something else, but settles for wrapping her arms around him again.

“You’re going to think you miss all this,” she says eventually. “Even though you’ve wanted out of here all along.”

Lawrence sniffles.

“Yeah. That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

For a brief moment, he’s happy that she knows him so well to know things like that. Then he remembers that it won’t matter how well she knows him, since he’s going to leave her anyway, and then everything gets hard again.

Wendy questions nothing. Doesn’t ask for anything in return, since this is the least she can do for him. For the longest time, he was the only thing that kept her alive. She’s been on this very bridge so many nights, struggling for breath, strings of mucus hanging from her lips. She wanted to jump so badly, but she doesn’t tell him that. He’ll never be able to go.

She just stands there with him until he’s calmed down, and then they go back home.

Leave the rushing water behind.


	25. Alcohol and Need

At some point, their class is on a fieldtrip. By coincidence, the bus passes the hospital they took Daniel to. Grey and red concrete and windows flashing in the sun.

Lawrence glances at Adam. It’s almost exactly two years ago now, that winter that they stumbled inside with Daniel wrapped in Adam’s jacket and Lou, who barely had the energy to keep her teeth chattering. That late evening in the waiting room, when they were finally safe. For the first time in months, Lawrence could be certain that no one he loved was hungry or cold.

 _I wish you were my brother_.

Adam meets his gaze when they pass the building. He smiles. It feels like the first time in forever that they actually understand each other.

Later, when they’re home, Lawrence asks Daniel if he remembers the winter he got so sick that they had to take him to the hospital. Daniel shakes his head, wide-eyed, and Adam smiles slyly as he sits down next to them.

“That was the first time we met,” he says, warming his hands on his coffee cup.

“It was?” Daniel asks, furrowing his brows in deep contemplation, before shaking his head again. “I don’t remember it at all.”

“Or, if we’re being technical,” Lawrence says, exchanging a secretive look with Adam, “the first time you and Adam met, he helped me taping egg cartons to the walls back in Somna.”

Adam’s grin grows wider, and Daniel looks between them like he’s trying to determine whether or not they’re serious.

“What?” he says eventually, and Adam and Lawrence burst out in laughter, when they hear how absurd it sounds, how absurd it all was back then.

Lawrence is so happy that Daniel doesn’t remember it. He hopes that when he grows up, Daniel’s old life won’t be more than a story Lawrence tells him sometimes. Real, and huge, but far away.

xxxxxxxxx

Spring’s on its way back, shy little buds are forming in the flower beds that Adam passes on the way to work.

Winter passed way too quickly. Somehow, he never wanted it to end, this new Lawrence he got to meet, carefree and happy as he planned his getaway, in the meantime as he hated that Lawrence so intensely that he’d prefer the hollow-eyed, sleep deprived version any day.

Adam stops and picks up the camera hanging around his neck. In the part across the street, there are two little girls, probably sisters, sitting across from each other in the grass. The older one is holding a pink umbrella over her head even though it’s not raining, and the little one is holding a smaller, pink umbrella over her head even though it’s not raining. They both glow from the greyish green background, and he has to take a picture.

Lawrence hasn’t gone back to his old ways since school started. He has to take his pills again, but he can study without that minor panic on his features, he falls asleep at a reasonable hour without waking up in cold sweat in the middle of the night. It’s probably less scary, now that he knows he’ll get there, where he worked so hard to make it to. Adam secretly hopes his anxiety will return, and then he hates himself so much for wishing that that he can barely stand it.

But even if you take the newfound calm out of the equation, something is off about Lawrence. It started when Lawrence and Wendy came home one night. It was late, the kids were asleep and Adam was tired as shit, should’ve been in bed an hour ago because they had a test the next day, but Lawrence wasn’t home, so there was no point. He couldn’t go to sleep without him if he tried.

He heard keys in the lock and Wendy walked in, face calculatedly turned down, and Adam felt the usual rush of bitter jealousy when he saw that she had Lawrence’s arm around her shoulders, even though it mostly seemed to be because he was too tired to walk on his own, head hanging and squinting at the already low light. He didn’t speak. Adam guessed they’d already talked way too much that night.

“Hey,” Wendy said, her voice sounded off, and gently pushed Lawrence onto the mattress. “Sorry it’s late, we…”

She didn’t finish the sentence, didn’t even try to think of a lie. Adam looked from her still partially hidden face to Lawrence, who’d already dozed off, rolled over.

“You okay?” Adam asked, almost whispered, as Wendy pretended to be really focused on her shoes.

“Yeah,” she mumbled, fingers trembling as she took her jacket off. “I mean… I tried talking to him about how things’ll be when he leaves. He didn’t take it well.”

Adam opened his mouth to keep asking stuff, but she’d already sat down on her mattress and started undressing, because she knew he couldn’t look at her, much less talk to her, when she was half naked. And either way, Lawrence’s breaths had gotten heavy and slow, and even though Adam wanted to wake him up and somehow force him to talk, there was that other thing.

Just wanting to crawl down next to him.

It was hard to do anything but changing to his pj’s, take Lawrence’s pants and shoes off, then crawl under the blanket. He still hasn’t gotten Wendy to tell him what happened that night, and he has no idea what he’d even ask Lawrence. But no one can say it’s not his business, considering how different Lawrence has been since then. After that night, it’s like they’re not two separate people. They’re tethered to each other.

Sort of like when they were younger, and hated each other at times, because of one night that somehow broke everything, but still had to be together, because that’s the way it was, nothing worked otherwise.

Even if Adam leaves Lawrence to go to work or because they have different classes, Lawrence gets something in his eyes when they see each other again, like he’s happy Adam is even alive. When he walks up to him, there’s a less subtle brush of hand against hand, and Adam gets too warm inside to ask.

Adam takes a few pictures of the girls in the park, tries to work from different angles. But then their dad gets up from a bench a few feet away, and Adam lowers his camera. He’s gotten chewed out before from taking shots of unsupervised kids.

There was a relief at first. That Lawrence couldn’t sit next to him without touching him, smiled widely every time he saw him. Then he saw the undertone of grief, almost fear, in those smiles, and that made it even more difficult.

Adam keeps walking, with one hand on his camera. Taking pictures has always cleared his head. And he has time before he has to be at the meeting at work, he can walk around for a bit. The longer he’s away, the happier Lawrence will be when he gets home.

He knows why Lawrence acts the way he does. He just prefers not to think about it. That’s how he handled everything before Lawrence got him to be in touch with his emotions and shit, and it always worked.

Adam swings his camera around by its strap more recklessly than he dared, as he keeps walking.

He’ll be fine without Lawrence. He’s going to survive. He usually doesn’t doubt that. Lawrence makes it harder when he acts this way, but even now, it’s not impossible.

xxxxxxxxx

Adam gets home late one night, alcohol and tobacco and weed a cloud around him. Most of it’s just set in his clothes after being at the junkyard. He’s not out of his mind in any way, but he _is_ drunk, and he expected Lawrence to at least be in bed, but of course he’s not.

Adam’s not the only one who can’t sleep without the other. That in itself is not weird. The weird part is that Lawrence is also drunk, so _obviously_ drunk that Adam can tell right away, even though his mind is sluggish.

“Hey,” Lawrence says, a touch too slow, careful not to slur, as Adam closes the front door.

It wouldn’t have been clear to anyone. Lawrence isn’t on his feet, but even where he’s sitting on the mattress, he’s swaying. Bangs are loose in his eyes, and he’s leaning his head against his knees. Looks up at Adam with a stupid grin that makes his eyes glimmer in the dark.

“Hey,” Adam says, trying to be quiet not to wake up the kids as he takes his jacket off. He doesn’t try one bit to seem sober. He’s not drunk enough to be irresponsible, but enough for it to affect his judgment, and just like Adam, Lawrence seems to have caught on to that in the rough five seconds Adam’s been here. Why else would he look at him like that?

“Where you been?” Lawrence asks as he hoists his head up with the one hand.

This fucking bond between them. How could ET and Elliot have so much fun with it?

“The yard.”

“You had fun?”

“Yeah,” Adam says, walking up to him. “You seem to have had some fun on your own.”

Lawrence grins again. It looks even more distorted when it’s dark. Adam’s careful not to sit down next to him. He knows what’ll happen if he does.

“Yeah…” Lawrence says, closing his eyes with a sigh. “Yeah, like… we had some beer, so I…”

The sentence stretches thin, and he sighs again. Then he looks up at Adam. Ruffled hair, willing, open, so fucking hard not to.

“Can’t you… Adam, come here.”

Adam feels it. His eyes darken.

“No.”

“Come on.”

“No, Lawrence, I’m staying right here.”

Lawrence’s smile fades. Not even alcohol can make this fun, Adam senses it, too. Something pricks him, cold running into the warm, fuzzy in his belly, and the look Lawrence gives him doesn’t help.

“Please,” Lawrence says. When Adam doesn’t move, he goes on: “But… you’ll sleep here? Right?”

Adam looks at him. Then at the bed. Lawrence’s shirt, wrinkled at the collar, shows a strip of skin on his chest.

“Of course,” he says.

Lawrence’s stupid sad face cracks in a smile so sincere he almost doesn’t look drunk at all. But it’s a good thing he is, otherwise he would’ve seen that Adam’s about to break.

“Come here then,” Lawrence says, beckoning tiredly with his arm. “Come on and we’ll… sleep.”

Adam doesn’t take any clothes off, it’d just make it harder, and at this point, he has to hide his face from Lawrence soon, or it’ll lead to drunken comfort, a pale imitation of what he’ll miss.

Lawrence takes his shirt off and crawls under the blanket. He always sleeps on the side closest to the wall, it makes him feel more safe if he wakes up by whatever it is that scares him, with the wall behind him and Adam in the front. Adam kicks his shoes off and lies down next to him, Lawrence’s arm around his waist.

“I can’t sleep without you here.”

Mumbles against Adam’s ear, tickling the thin hairs on the back of his neck. Lawrence won’t remember saying this tomorrow, Adam’s not even sure he’s aware of it now. It shouldn’t hurt this much.

He has to slap Lawrence’s hands away more than once through the night. Demanding lips, open mouth, hands searching places Adam allowed them just one night that right now seems to be one night too much. Has to hiss at Lawrence again and again that he’s not doing this, it’s over. And even though it’s true, it doesn’t feel like it.

So many things they never got to say, so many ways in which they never got to show that they need each other.

Adam’s tired, but he barely sleeps that night. About four hours later, he logs onto the school web to give himself a sick day, and when he turns around, he sees Lawrence’s arm stretched over his side of the bed.


	26. Final Night

Adam likes putting things off. It wasn’t a problem when he was younger; he didn’t have a whole lot _to_ put off. Homework was disposable back then. Things could still get better, even for weird little kids like him.

Every homework are potential college degrees now, and he still lets them pass unfinished because there’s no room for improvement. The things settling in his body now won’t be able to change.

His mind is settling, capabilities settling, he’ll never be good at anything besides taking pictures.

He’s stopped growing, he’ll always be scrawny and short. And somehow, in the midst of it all, Adam’s supposed to be an adult now.

But he can’t change. When Lawrence told him about the scholarship, he thought, once the initial panic calmed down, _well, we still got ten months left,_ and that’s what he kept thinking for five of those months. They still had time. It was running out way too fast, but they always had time.

In junior year, when Lawrence needed straight A’s, and every woken second was spent either studying or make sure mom didn’t drown his siblings in the tub, they still had time to hang out. That cold winter when Daniel almost died, they still had time to take him to the hospital.

They’ve been broken to pieces so many times they’d become indestructible. But time is running out.

Adam doesn’t care. Of course. He always stops caring when he notices he’s caring too much.

“It’s not like we can’t keep in touch,” Lawrence says, looking up from his textbooks. He sounds like he’s wanted to say this for the past hour. Adam nods absentmindedly and writes a date down.

“Right.”

Lawrence keeps looking at him, he can feel it. He says nothing, and after a few seconds, Adam hears his pencil scratching again. He thinks that means he’s safe, but of course not.

“Cause, like, what else can we do?” Lawrence says as he’s writing. “We don’t have any options. Other than staying I touch, I mean. At least that’s how I see it.”

Adam sighs.

“Could you not?”

Lawrence actually does what he asks, that alone is reason for worry. But he doesn’t go back to studying.

“It’ll be twice as hard over there. You’re the only thing keeping me somewhat normal.”

“Lawrence, would you shut the fuck up?”

He tries looking Lawrence in the eye, knows that’d give him some leverage, but he can only do it for a few seconds. Lawrence doesn’t give up, though. He raises his brows, slightly offended, but not having it in him to start fighting.

“I can’t even tell you I’m going to miss you?”

“No, you can’t,” Adam says. “I don’t want to hear it.”

He doesn’t want Lawrence’s love. It just gets him thinking that way again. _You don’t_ have _to go, do you?_

“You’re the reason I’m alive today,” Lawrence says. “But fine. Whatever.”

Adam doesn’t mind him.

xxxxxxxxx

They were out walking one night, junior year. Adam had nabbed a bottle of fancy beer from his dad, even though he’d personally prefer the stuff for two bucks you can get at the convenience store. They passed it between them as they passed through a playground, that kind of playground that’s not even cute anymore but just creepy, with mud and empty cans and dusty swings squeaking. Lawrence sat down on one of them, and Adam sat next to him, without pointing out what a baby he was, because there was no point. Lawrence’s role as the big one of the two of them was clear even then, no matter how many swings he sat on.

“It’s your life,” Adam said, when their previous discussion had laid still for a bit. “That’s all I’m saying. I get that it’s super important that your siblings get an okay life. But what the shit is life worth if you’re doing it all for someone else? Isn’t it time you do you?”

Lawrence shrugged. It seemed like he’d used to ask himself that question, but eventually given up on it.

“Maybe. Yeah, maybe it is. But… I love them a little too much for that to be all that important.”

Adam glanced at him. His look made it clear that he really had no idea what Lawrence was talking about. Lawrence smiled, ashamed.

“It’s like… when someone means that much, it doesn’t matter how I feel. I love them so much that it’s unhealthy, for real. I’d be better off if I stopped doing it. I wouldn’t have to study or do anything at all. But it is what it is. I can’t do anything about it.”

Adam kept staring into space for a moment. He had no idea how to answer something like that.

“Fucking rom-com moment,” he mumbled and took a sip of the beer.

Lawrence kept smiling.

xxxxxxxxx

Adam suddenly remembers that evening, after not thinking about it for years, a few days after they studied. Then he walks out of the apartment, slams the door shut and doesn’t come back for the whole night. When Lawrence asks about it the next day, he pretends not to hear him. Still doesn’t have the energy.

He knows he’s not the most important thing in Lawrence’s life. That he probably never was. But it hurts, remembering it so clearly. He wants to at least pretend that they care equally about each other.

If the rest of the world went away, Adam would still be fine as long as he had Lawrence with him. But it’s getting more obvious every day that if Lawrence left him, and everything else was the same, his life will be over.

Even though he’s what keeps Lawrence mentally sound, Adam will never mean as much to him as he does to Adam.

Like a fucking heartbeat.

xxxxxxxxx

 School ends. It felt like it never would, but it does.

Lawrence graduates with the highest marks in their grade. The only reason Adam even passes his classes is many sleepless nights through their last semester. He worked his ass off and it gave results, and well, it’s always nice when that happens.

Their principal holds a speech as they’re standing in their schoolyard, just wanting to get out. She actually looks a tiny bit moved.

“I know it doesn’t feel like it now,” the principal says, on the stairway of the building, “now that you’re all headed off to your future… but it’s my sincere belief and conviction that everyone in this grade will go on to do great things. You’ll all have plenty of things to brag about in your class reunion, twenty-five years from now.”

Adam looks at Claire, her grey eyes sparkle from under the graduation cap. She smiles at him, rolling her eyes, probably thinking his dark gaze stems from annoyance over this pretentious speech, instead of a total panic. Adam manages to smile back. She looks beautiful. And right then, he feels that he’s her big brother, that he wants to protect her from all the stuff out there, the things that are probably worse than anything that can happen to them in this school. Even though he’s probably the worst fit in the world for that task.

Then he turns to Lawrence. He still kind of hates him, but when he sees his face under that stupid cap, he can’t help but being happy for him. Lawrence shines like a kid on Christmas.

Adam hassled Lawrence a little for prompting that they’d get graduation caps. They don’t have the money for it, really. But right now, he’s happy he they bought them. He’s never been a fan of these kind of symbolics, but this cap really does represent something. Lawrence has accomplished everything he was hoping for when Adam first met him. It’s nice. And scary.

Lawrence has always had a drive, and even though that drive gave him aggressive gastritis, at least he had something to fight for. Adam doesn’t. He has no reason to move to Canada.

Lawrence looks at him the second before they throw their caps in the air. He smiles, Adam smiles back, they’re equally terrified and it shows. But they cheer as loud as everyone else when they finally mark their return to freedom, free of the place that’s ruined their lives but at least was a safe place.

Adam and Lawrence graduate a sunny day in the first week of June. And even though their days as a unit and in safety are over, it’s a day they can both be proud of making it to.

xxxxxxxxx

Lawrence’s nightmares, or whatever they are, went away for a while, but they return over the summer. Adam knows that now would be a good time to pull back, the way he did back when he really shouldn’t have, but he can’t.

He’d like to see the time when he fled from Lawrence as in the past. That he’d learned something from these years. That he’ll be able to cherish the time they had together, instead of resenting it for being over. But it doesn’t work like that, of course. He has to sleep with Lawrence. That won’t change just because change is what a normal person would aim for.

No matter how warm it gets through the night, skin on skin, slippery with sweat, Adam’s going to be there to grab Lawrence’s flailing arms when he wakes up from his own shouting. It’s all he’s good for. And that’s fine.

He knows exactly what Lawrence is so scared of now. If he tried, he could probably figure out exactly what his nightmares are about. But what’s the point. They won’t sleep in the same bed long enough to do anything about it.

One night, Lawrence dreams that he’s on the plane to Canada, and discovers that he accidentally brought one of Adam’s books. He runs up to the cockpit and tells the pilot that they have to go back, and when the plane turns around, they fly low enough for him to see Adam’s apartment.

Lawrence can see through the windows that he’s not there. He walks up to the pilot again and says that they have to look elsewhere; he guides them to the junkyard, the school, the places Adam likes to shoot.

They look everywhere. Adam’s nowhere to be found.

xxxxxxxxx

How could it be three years? Adam knows how long three years are.

Three years crawl by. Three years are a certain amount of nights spent walking in circles all across town so he doesn’t have to be at home, and he could usually avoid it, but sometimes dad could think of a reason to keep him there. He didn’t even have to use force. The way he looked at Adam was enough.

Three years are a certain amount of days praying to God that dad wouldn’t be home. A certain amount of disgusted looks from his teachers.

How many days are there in three years? Adam tries to calculate in his head as Lawrence looks at him. He sucks at math, but he’d gladly count the grains of dust on the floor if it kept his mind off of Lawrence’s suitcase, packed neatly, next to the bed.

He hopes that Lawrence will just give up and walk away. But he wouldn’t be Lawrence if he gave up anything.

“You got your stuff?” he asks when he realizes Lawrence won’t budge until Adam acknowledges his existence.

“Yeah,” Lawrence says, raking fingers through his hair. “Or, I gotta pack… my pajamas, the kids’ toothbrushes and stuff, but I’ll get that in the morning, before…”

He quiets down. Knows Adam’s not paying attention anyway.

“You sure you’re not coming?”

There’s something new, desperate in his voice. Adam looks at him again. 

“I have to go through the last of my photos,” he says halfheartedly. “They’re… the deadline for the magazine is tomorrow.”

Lawrence meets his gaze. It’s there too; whatever’s made him almost manic about having Adam near him during these months. But then he looks away, nods.

“Okay. So it’s cool that I’ll leave them here?”

He nods towards Lou and Daniel, they’re piled up on the mattress in front of the TV. 

“Yeah, sure,” Adam says. “Go out and... sin.”

He’s not even sure if that was supposed to be a joke. Lawrence nods and grabs his jacket. Wendy gets off her bed and follows him to the door.

She’s been worse than Adam at pretending she’s okay with all this. Sure, he’s not subtle either, but at least he doesn’t lock himself in the bathroom crying every five minutes.

He hasn’t even talked to her about whether or not she wants to live here when Lawrence is gone. He already knows the answer. Adam hasn’t been the best support for her over the past few weeks, when he crying has become more frequent. Turns his face away when she has those red, puffy eyes. He’s as bad at handling her loss as he is his own, and it’s ruined whatever measly amity has been between them.

But despite this, Wendy’s the one going out with Lawrence tonight, one last hurrah before he goes. And Adam’s the one who’s been offered to go with them, more than once, but still stays home.

Lawrence opens the front door and waves goodbye to Lou and Daniel. Adam raises his hand in a meaningless gesture before the door closes. After that, he falls back, fucks his economy, opens the window and chain smokes until Lou tells him she can’t find her pajamas.

He has no idea how many days there are in three years. It doesn’t matter anymore.

When the kids are tucked in, he sneaks down to the convenience store and buys two six packs. He sits in front of them by the kitchen table for almost half an hour before putting them in the fridge. Instead he prepares a whole pot of that stupid herbal tea that Lawrence claims helps him sleep, drinking cup upon cup as he’s reading one of Daniel’s old comics.   

He doesn’t know how late it is when he hears a thud against the front door, followed by a sound like someone drags a towel across it. He gets up, opens the door, and it takes him a few seconds to make out Lawrence’s run-down, smelly silhouette against the stairway wall.

“Lawrence?” he asks needlessly and looks around. “Where’s Wendy?”

“She…” Lawrence throws his hand out aimlessly. “She… dropped me off here, cause she thought… she said we needed to talk.”

Adam leans against the doorframe.

“How much have you had?”

Lawrence leans his head back to look at him. He seems to have forgotten how to normally aim your eyes.

“I don’t know, I… I thought you might… you might not want me to come home, so I…”

He clears his throat. Doesn’t really explain why Adam would rather want him home after he got hammered. Adam doesn’t need to hear it.

Lawrence probably does his best, it’s hard to tell in the dark, but Adam hears the exact hitch in his voice when the mask slips, the strung-up, thin shell of a face beneath, just barely thick enough not to crack and leak blood.

“Could you help me up?” Lawrence says eventually. His voice is so tiny.

Adam looks at his friend, brother, lover, his whatever-he-is. He’s not sure what to do, but he still has no choice, it’s been a long time since he did.

He grabs Lawrence’s arm, hauls him to his feet and into the apartment. He hopes that Wendy’s more sober than this, otherwise she’ll wake up in a ditch somewhere, and Adam won’t be able to look for her. The small amount of sympathy he’s capable of is booked for the night.

There’s nothing to say. Adam doesn’t want to talk. He puts Lawrence to bed, with minimal help from him, slow movements. Tucks him in when he balls up and shivers. Wants to hold him. No point.

He gets water, leans Lawrence’s head back, because he seems to have forgotten how to swallow. Adam takes care of him, because it’s his last chance to do so. He strokes bangs out of Lawrence’s eyes when he pukes in the trash can, caresses his pale cheek when he huddles up in bed again. Lawrence mumbles incoherently. Adam catches a few words, but doesn’t say anything back. Just like Lawrence, he has no way to explain how this makes him feel. The packed suitcase next to their bed.

It’s almost five AM when Lawrence starts to speak. His teeth have been chattering in drunken ague all night, but he’s been quiet for so long that Adam almost thought he was asleep. His voice is frail, hoarse, but clear.

“Adam,” Lawrence says, and Adam turns around next to the mattress. “I’m leaving tomorrow.”

Adam nods.

“You are.”

Lawrence looks at him. The morning light makes his blue eyes look almost transparent.

“I’m going to Canada, to a nice school,” he goes on.

Adam nods again.

“Yeah, you are. Just like you always wanted.”

Lawrence almost hunches, his hands shaking where they lie on the pillow.

“I don’t want to go.”

His entire face retracts, mouth quivering like on a baby, that’s all Adam catches before how covers his face but can’t hold back a thin, hollow scream.

Adam shuffles off the floor and sits next to him on the mattress, Lawrence is already in fetal position. Adam pulls him into his arms, tries to hold him, breathe warmly into his hair so he’ll remember that he’s here, that’s all that’s real, it usually calms him down no matter how bad it gets. But the shell of fear covering Lawrence is impenetrable, Adam can’t reach him, really touch him and say that he knows, he knows he doesn’t want to go.

He can’t do shit. Just hold Lawrence, shaking, gasping, barely any air left in him but still repeats it.

“I don’t want to go I don’t want to go I do-ho-ho-ho…”

It fades into shattered sob, Adam holds him tighter. He doesn’t try to talk to him, there’s no point. But he knows.

Even Adam thinks this is scary, and he gets to stay in the life he’s gotten used to. He doesn’t leave anything behind, and even though he’s never been able to see it that way, he knows that in this case, it’s better to stay than being the one who goes.

Lawrence is headed off into the future. He leaves something he knows is good for something that could be great. It can be everything he’s dreamed of those mornings he woke up from Lou crying.

But the future could also be this. The future could be terrifying, cold, and sour with the smell from the trash can.

Adam shuts it in, thinks that one of them should stay calm. He’s not sure how he does it.

This night is a transition. Adam wishes they could skip it and just… _be_ in the future, without having to step into it. It’d be easier if it were all dealt with instead of something they have to handle now.

They’d make it through if they got to be together. But they can’t reach each other now, and tomorrow, they lose any possibility to do it. 


	27. Bookends

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can you tell I have too much free time lol

Lawrence has no memory of falling asleep that night. It probably happened the second that he thought he might as well stay up, because it’d just be a bitch to have to wake up on two hours of sleep. But he opens his eyes at the sound of the alarm, and it’s like he hasn’t slept at all. His head doesn’t feel attached to his body, brain sort of floating around.

He must’ve slept. The last thing he remembers is Adam sitting next to him on the bed, holding him through his breakdown, as usual. He’s not here now.

Lawrence knows he’s on a tight schedule. He’s spent every available second the past week repeating this day in his head, he’s calculated and shortened down and cut his time up into smaller and smaller pieces. He knows he has to get up and prepare breakfast this second to keep to the plan, and he does, after a slight hesitation. He can’t really pretend to be stable. His head is throbbing from the booze, his mouth feels dry like dust. 

He does his best. Gets up, starts handling everything that needs to be handled. But he can’t focus, gaze flickering across the apartment, out the window, Adam could be in the bathroom, he could’ve gotten out to buy coffee, maybe they were low on it. There’s still a chance he’ll come back to say goodbye, and Lawrence is going to wait for him. Even though he knows that’s not the case. Adam’s gone, and he’s not going to come back until he’s sure Lawrence has left for the airport.

Lawrence doesn’t break, no panic attacks. But he stares blankly out the window for a few minutes. No nails left to bite. After a while, he gets himself back together, wakes Lou and Daniel up, handing them their sandwiches. He doesn’t have time for this shit. He’s going to Canada. To college. He has baggage he needs to double check.

And since Adam’s moved the trash can standing next to their bed last night, he doesn’t have to think about how that really makes him feel.

xxxxxxxxx

Adam sits down on a bench with his legs spread wide once he’s certain he’s far enough away from home. His stomach rumbles angrily, he didn’t dare having breakfast before he left. Didn’t want Lawrence to wake up.

It’s that time of day when most dog owners take their first walk, the dew is fading from the leaves. He tries to appreciate this as much as he used to as he rakes a hand through his hair, trying to get back to himself.

When he was younger, before high school, Adam used to sneak out of his nice house and his nice blocks before anyone else was awake. He had to get up early, because it took some time to get to those neighborhoods he really wanted to see come back to life in the mornings. Those places that were _really_ beautiful, with frost-covered beer cans lined up on the window sills in the winter, and when it rained, brown, dirty water ran through the gutters, slurped down through the crates.

He spent a lot of time in Somna. He liked it. He doesn’t mention it to Lawrence much, he knows it’d just annoy him, since the whole reason Adam liked it was that he wasn’t tied to it. It was probably all about the possibility of escape, even if the escape wasn’t necessarily a better option.

Adam hasn’t been there since they met. Lawrence wouldn’t spend a second more in Somna than he had to, and Adam’s quota for beautiful, broken things was filled in other ways since then.

He’s not going with Lawrence to the airport. Wendy can do it. She’s the one who’s cool with all this, Adam will never even pretend to be. He doesn’t care if Lawrence never gets anywhere in life, if his dreams never come true, as long as he stays inside the borders. It makes him a much worse friend than Lawrence deserves, but who cares. Adam’s never been as much of a good guy as Lawrence makes him out to be, anyway.

Adam lights a cigarette and watches the dog walkers. There’s a barred window in the building next to him, and someone’s shattered one of the panes and tied a red scarf around one of the bars, like a calling card. He wishes he’d brought his camera.

Maybe it’s the thought of beauty and filth that brings the association, but he suddenly remembers an evening when they were together. It must’ve been sometime junior year, before Adam left home, possibly when they got back to being friends after that goddamn night when the lines got blurred. They’d been sitting on Adam’s bed, Lawrence had been tired and his hair mussed, Adam had been happy, even though dad was coming back home the next day.

He’d filled his entire bed with books, totally unintentional, it’d started with one quote he’d wanted to recite to Lawrence, but that was an hour ago, and since then he’d thought of so many things he wanted to read to him. He hadn’t even stopped when he saw that Lawrence was getting bored, because this was a part of him, and Lawrence had to know it all, every boring, geeky, clingy part of him.

“Oh, listen to this,” he said and slapped Lawrence’s knee, making him lift his head. “This is so you. ‘The real tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but self-denial. Beautiful sins, like beautiful things, are a privilege of the rich.’”

Lawrence chuckled wearily and sat up. He leaned over to see the page Adam was reading from, all warm and close.

“He got that right,” he said and ran a finger across the page. “But why’d you doodle in the book?”

Adam looked at the paragraphs he’d underlined in ballpoint pen, and shrugged.

“It’s the parts I like the most. And it’s not like I’m going to give it to someone else.”

Lawrence frowned. They’re each other’s polar opposite on this. Lawrence doesn’t even want to highlight important parts of textbooks, he wants everything to be clean, untouched, and preferably in alphabetical order.

“It’s even more _mine_ if I’m the one botching it,” Adam tried to explain, careful not to turn to Lawrence. His face was barely an inch from his.

Lawrence shook his head and laid back down. Adam grinned at his unawareness and crossed his legs. This was probably his favorite of all the times they were that close; when he was so conscious of it, but Lawrence barely seemed to notice it at all.

“You will always care for me,” he said, smile widening. “I represent to you all the sins you do not have the courage to commit.”

Lawrence gave him a fake scowl.

“You read that in a damn book.”

“Yeah.”

Lawrence smiled. His eyes probably flickered across Adam’s mouth before he sat up again, but it was nothing to get worked up about. It was one of many times.

Adam thinks back of that night now, as the cigarette turns to ash between his fingers, and realizes that he was always prepared for this, even back then. He knew Lawrence would leave him before he got his scholarship. He just didn’t dare thinking about it, because if he did, it’d be so typical of him to think that what they had, whatever it was, wasn’t enough to keep Lawrence here. That Adam was just a representation of sins. The little devil on his shoulder whose only job was to even out the weight of the angel, who’d always win in the end.

xxxxxxxxx

Lawrence gets a huge, unexplainable lump in his belly as he closes the door to the apartment for the last time, and he has to rush down the stairs not to get swallowed whole by it. They have thirty-eight minutes exactly to find Wendy, and even though he’s calculated the trip to Forest Park as an hour even though it takes less than half of that time, his head will explode if he breaks schedule.

“I brought everyone?” he says, pretending to check that both Lou and Daniel are with him. “I didn’t leave anyone under the bed?” They giggle, even though they’re beat. “You guys sure you didn’t forget anything?”

“You asked us a thousand times,” Lou moans and rolls her eyes theatrically. “Can we go now? What if the airplane leaves without us?”

“It won’t,” Lawrence says, opening the front door. “We’ll take the L right to the airport. It’s designed especially for poor people.”

“What about Adam?” Daniel asks gently. “Isn’t he going with us?”

Lawrence tries to pretend this is a question like the previous once as they start walking.

“We talked about this,” he says. “Adam’s staying here. My school doesn’t want him, and he doesn’t want it.”

They don’t talk for a few minutes. When Lawrence finds Wendy in the park, the last time he’ll go there, it feels good to have an excuse to let the tears flow freely.

xxxxxxxxx

Adam looks at his watch. The train Lawrence planned to catch leaves in three hours, but he’s probably started making his way there already. Finding your way at Forest Park is hard, especially with two little kids. Even if he’d want to make things right with Lawrence, it’s too late. And what’d be the point? No matter what he does now, everything will turn out the way it was always meant to turn out. And it won’t make him any surer of what that is. Whatever happens in the future, he’s pretty certain he’s going to hate it with intensity.

Adam sighs, lighting another cigarette. He’s already feeling sick and he’s busted his smoking budget for this week, but who cares. Living will be cheaper now. And no one’s going to whine about how he’ll get cancer.

No one waking him up in the middle of the night. No one making him so heart-wrenchingly worried.

Oscar Wilde could’ve written a book about him and Lawrence. He used to like those love stories that were nothing but everything at the same time, like that scarf tied around the bars next to him, like that feeling Adam gets when Lawrence lies down next to him every night, no matter how pissed they are with each other.

Lovers always die in those realistic romantic novels. Adam never got why.

xxxxxxxxx

Lawrence feels panic welling up, the only thing keeping him from a complete meltdown is his stubbornness. This is not possible. How many fucking flights can there be? Do they really need an airport the size of a small town?

“Aren’t we going in?” Lou asks.

“I don’t know.”

“I think we are. Can I see the ticket?”

“No,” Lawrence says, looking at the paper he printed from the school computer. “It says terminal five. The fuck’s terminal five? Am I supposed to know that?”

Lou sighs.

“We’ll have to go in and check. There’s probably somebody we can ask.”

“Louise, be quiet. We’re going to terminal five. It says ‘five’ above this door. But the entire goddamn airport looks the same. And we’re going to terminal five.”

He’s only half aware that he’s saying this out loud. There’s no one around him that can assist him in this, no matter how adult Lou tries to act. And he’s never flown, or been to an airport, barely seen one in the movies. At first he didn’t even know there were different terminals, it wasn’t until a few days ago, when Adam asked him where he was going from, Lawrence broke out in cold sweat when he realized that no one had made it clear to him where that there were different terminals, and that it was pretty crucial that he went to the right one. Adam had to google it for him, and “terminal five” is now scribbled on top of his ticket in partially smeared pen. It’s right there, clear as day.

It still takes him roughly fifteen minutes of standing outside, looking from the paper to the sign above the gate, before he dares going inside.

They’ve said a heartbreaking goodbye to Wendy. When Lawrence was finally sitting on the train, it felt like he had nothing left in him, but when he enters the airport, he realizes how much of himself he leaves behind.

There are too many people here. Everyone seems so sure of where they’re going, and even though there are signs everywhere showing where everything is and how to get there, Lawrence has no fucking clue of the way, information doesn’t stick. Eventually, he dares walking up to the board saying which counter is for them.

The woman behind the counter looks nice. It doesn’t make him feel one bit better.

“Hello,” she says, glancing across Lou and Daniel. Probably observing how they look like they’ve just landed on Mars.

“Hello,” Lawrence says. “We’re going to Canada.”

“Which flight?”

“Huh?”

Lawrence has repeated exactly what to say. There is no room for her to say things he hasn’t counted on.

“What time is your flight?” She smiles patiently.

“Oh,” he says, looking at the paper again. “Three thirty.”

“Okay,” the woman says. “Can I see some ID?”

Lawrence starts digging through his bag. The social security cards are the things he’s checked on most frequently, and probably the most expensive thing in his entire luggage. The scholarship covered them, too, but only because he made sure they did.

It’s pure luck that he managed to turn eighteen, so he could serve as legal guardian for Lou and Daniel, in time for them to get their cards. No way mom had saved their birth certificates, she barely saw their birth as proof that they were real.

Lawrence feels his stomach retracting as the woman behind the counter looks through their cards, it burns right in that spot where the ribs split over his stomach.

She’s going to send him home. She won’t let him get away. She can tell on their social security cards. She’ll laugh at the fact that he’s even trying. Look right through his nice clothes. Somniac.

The voice waking him up at night.

“How many bags are you checking in?”

“Checking in?” Lawrence echoes stupidly. “Well…”

“Meaning, how many would you like to bring onto the plane? And how many do you wish to leave now and get back when you’ve reached your destination."

She’s thinking they haven’t been on a plane on their own before, mom probably dealt with all this. She’s going to help this young man and the cute little kids, it’s her job. And he’s so polite, you don’t really expect that from someone his age.

Lawrence sees his reflection in her smile. He looks the exact way she sees him, just the way he wants to be seen, and thus he only sees a big fat lie.

“Oh! It’s just this.” He shows her the bag containing all their possessions.

“Great!” she says. “You can place it right here.”

Lawrence hauls the bag onto the conveyer belt. She types something.

“You’re going to gate six,” she says, sticking something onto his bag, before handing him some strips of paper. “These are your boarding cards, you’ll have to present them before boarding.”

Lawrence paws the cards up from the counter. She smiles. He smiles back.

He’s so scared of getting caught now. He doesn’t even want to think about how bad it’ll be at a nice college. He’s not going to, either. He’s going to look at the signs in the ceiling. They’re going to gate six. 

Lawrence grabs Lou and Daniel, one by each hand. He’s focusing on everything pointless right now, he wouldn’t be surprised if he accidentally left them somewhere.

“Let’s go,” he says. “Look out for a number six.”

He follows the signs in the ceiling, always the same ones. They don’t seem to lead them anywhere except up identical escalators, more flashy stores, or _boutiques,_ as they're apparently called. Overpriced food and enormous bags of candy. Lawrence is at an airport for the first time in eighteen years of life, and he sees kids younger than Daniel run past them.

The dust stays under his skin.

Lawrence doesn’t know how to live in the normal world. He never knew the reality he had with Adam was off, because it was more normal than what he was used to. And truth is, it could’ve been totally off the rails; it still would’ve made more sense than this.

The airport shouldn’t be this huge. The ceiling’s going to collapse over them.

Eventually, they get to a spot where people put their bags on conveyer belts and guards ask people to take their jackets off. Adam had told him that this would happen; a safety check before they board the plane. Lawrence halts. A man in a uniform is standing in a booth in front of the belt, blipping everyone’s tickets. Lou looks up at him.

“What are they doing?”

“They’re making sure we don’t bring anything dangerous onto the plane,” Lawrence says. “But we don’t have to go through yet, we have hours before the plane leaves. We can sit out here a bit.”

“Why?” Lou asks, skeptically.

Lawrence pretends not to hear her, finding a bench by the nearest wall, sits down, gratefully, uncertain of what it is he’s hoping for. Lou and Daniel sits down, starts doodling in their notebooks.

xxxxxxxxx

Adam steps into a cab, about an hour away. His voice probably sounds almost normal when he asks the driver to go to O’Hare, but he’s sweating profusely when he’s checking for his wallet in his pocket. When the car starts moving, he gets a sudden insight in how dumb it is that he’s spending the majority of the money he has this week to go to the airport to say something he’s yet to figure out what it is, to someone he knows won’t stay, anyway. But he’s still doing it, gladly. How sad is that?

He gets his phone out of his pocket. The songs he listens to during the drive will forever be associated with nausea, sweaty palms, such enormous anxiety that he’d almost prefer opening the car door and run all the way to the airport. When he finally gets there and says that he wants to pay cash, his voice sounds weird and gravelly. Fuck. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

Adam almost runs to the nearest entrance. The cabbie asked him what terminal he was going to, but Adam had no clue, he’s already forgotten what he scribbled onto Lawrence’s booking info, and when he gets into the maze of white, sleek floors, he feels even more lost.

“’Scuse me,” he says, jogging up to the nearest counter labeled ‘information.’ “How do I get to the three-thirty plane to Ontario?”

The lady behind the counter smiles, overseeing at his slightly hysterical expression, types something on her keyboard.

“Gate six,” she says. “Terminal five.”

Adam nods, without really registering what she says. Then he starts walking. He has to work to read the signs, and not just run around, hoping he’ll find Lawrence sooner or later.

He doesn’t know what terminal he’s at now. He definitely doesn’t know how long it’ll take him to get to Lawrence. And somehow, even though he hasn’t been on a plane since he got old enough to stay home by himself when his family went away, he knows that if Lawrence has boarded, it won’t be like in romantic comedies, he can’t make the plane to around by telling the TSA staff that he has to tell someone he loves him and he won’t be whole again until he gets back.

If Lawrence is gone, he’s gone.

Adam tries not to look at the time too much as he’s walking. It makes no difference whether he knows how much time he’s lost or not. It’s lost either way. That’s what he needs to focus on. It’s over.

xxxxxxxxx

When Lawrence sees Adam, he’s sweaty, out of breath, powerwalking towards Lawrence like he’ll disappear if he doesn’t reach him right away. Lawrence isn’t surprised at all. When he gets up and starts jogging, it’s like he’s been waiting for this since he sat down. Getting up and running towards his best friend.

To say goodbye.

Smoking hasn’t been kind on Adam’s lungs, he’s breathing like he ran a marathon, but still manages to smile before they meet in a hug that’s almost violent. The smell of leather and sweat and tobacco engulfs Lawrence like a cloud, and he realizes that he’s crying, but also that he has no intention of stopping.

When they let go of each other, they don’t do it all the way. Adam maintains a firm grip on Lawrence’s shoulders, and Lawrence’s hands move across Adam’s hands, arms, face, wants it all.

“Adam-Adam, I knew you’d come,” Lawrence say, can’t really make sense of the way he’s talking. He tries to convey how happy he is that Adam’s here, but his breaths are jagged, hands shaking as usual. “I-I knew you wouldn’t - knew you wouldn’t let me…”

Breathing becomes hard. Adam looks kind of annoyed. Maybe he imagined this as a happy reunion, with a dramatic string quartet in the background, but everything he has to bottle up in front of others wells back up when Adam’s with him, how tiny he really is, how he’s not ready for this at all, how he needs Adam with him, he’ll die without him.

“Dude, stop,” Adam mumbles, carefully prying Lawrence’s hands off his arms. “You knew I wouldn’t let you go without saying goodbye, right? You knew that. I just couldn’t… fucks sake, Lawrence, _relax…”_

Lawrence nods. He’s about to crack, and Adam shouldn’t have to feel like the last thing he does with him is taking care of him.

“You okay?”

“No. No, it’s…”

Lawrence can’t think of a word for it.

“Hey,” Adam says, putting a gentle hand on the back of Lawrence’s neck. “I know it’s scary. Okay? It’s fucking terrifying. Even I think it is, and I’m staying put. But, you know… you gotta do this. You know that?”

Lawrence nods again.

“How can you be so goddamn cool about it?” he mutters, rubbing one hand against his eye. Adam smiles, almost entirely without bitterness.

“Somebody should be.”

Lawrence tries to take a breath. It turns into more of a quivering sob.

It shouldn’t have to hurt this much. It’s not fair.

“I love you,” Lawrence says.

Adam nods impatiently, looking at the floor.

“I know, I know. But like…” he says, shoving his hands in his pocket, like this is just any other talk. “I kind of think that we… even if we maybe… put a lot of shit aside, that we maybe should’ve… talked about or something… they weren’t totally shitty years, right?”

Lawrence shakes his head.

“No. No, they weren’t.” Stay. Please.

Adam smiles that way again.

“Adam, I’m sorry I…”

“Don’t be fucking sorry.”

He swallows. Lawrence tries to think that it’s good that he doesn’t start crying, too. Mostly feels lonely, though.

“I… I kind of feel like I did a good job with you, you know.”

Lawrence nods.

“You did. Thanks.”

Nods again. Adam has to look away when he sees Lawrence’s gaze. Like something he’s spent three years trying to build up in there gets brutally trampled.

Then Lawrence leans forward and kisses him gently, Adam gets that feeling again, that “oh god why did we ever stop” feeling, lacing his fingers into Lawrence’s hair. It’s stupid, it doesn’t solve anything. It won’t make it easier.

Adam doesn’t let him go. Leans his forehead against Lawrence’s, sweat-shiny, tussled bangs against his perfect ones. Then he stands up on his toes and hugs Lawrence as tight as he can. Tries locking this in his memory, Lawrence’s body, the warmth, even the bottomless despair.

“I’m going,” he mumbles against Lawrence’s ear. “Is that cool?”

He lets him go. Lawrence nods.

“Sure.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

Adam sighs.

“Good. I can’t do it. I’ll tie you to this bench if that’s what it takes to…”

He quiets down. Lawrence nods again.

“I get it. It’s fine.”

Adam takes a step back. Lawrence holds his gaze for as long as he can, as he starts walking away, waves halfheartedly at Lou and Daniel. They wave back, kind of confused, probably expecting him to say a proper goodbye to them, too. But there wouldn’t be any point.

Adam starts walking.

Lawrence never thought he’d have to think that. Not really. That Adam’s walking away from him.

Not without knowing he’d come back.

He sits down. It’s still quite a while until their plane leaves, so he just sits there, actually staying calm, until they’re through the screening and it’s time to board. Then he sees a kid with a Sex Pistols shirt boarding with him, and he cries quietly all the way across the border.

Adam’s never felt this lonely with this many people around him. His legs aren’t attached to the rest of his body, they somehow bring him to the chairs out by the terminal even though his upper body is floppy, like a ragdoll. A completely airtight lid over it all, while something is being torn off of him, something else settling in.

He hoists his knees up, burying his face in them. After a while, a guard walks up to him and says that if he doesn’t calm down, they’ll have to escort him off the premises.

Adam squeezes his lips together, even though he has no memory of making the slightest sound. It feels very important that they don’t make him go home.

He stays there, trembling with spasms and his knees pressed to his chest for a while, because he can’t cry, because he’s terrified, he can’t go home because he has no money, and right now, he’s not sure he has a home, either.

He knows what it’s like to go home to a place where no one wants him. He wanted to believe that he wouldn’t have to do that anymore.

Eventually, he gets up. He digs some bills out of his pocket and starts walking to the exit. And he’s just going home in lack of anything else, and because he wants to end this here, leave the airport and declare it the end, of whatever it was they had and this stupid fucking childhood that never really started.  


	28. Dear Adam

Adam,

Yup, I’m writing a letter. Super lame, I know. But I won’t get my computer until my classes get started, and since I’ve barely put my bags down and already started bawling, I figured it wasn’t really the time to be practical. You probably won’t get this until a week or so, so I’ll send all this via mail when I get my computer. So you don’t think I’ve forgotten about you.

Apparently I’m in Canada. You’d love it here. (No, you wouldn’t.) You’d hate every minute of it. They showed us the school building before driving us to campus. We just passed it on the bus, and I still got terrified. The whole place looks like your old house, except twenty times bigger and with a park. Then they dropped us off and showed us the dorm, so we could drop off our luggage and siblings, then we were going out to eat with all the other exchange students. They talked about the cultural relationships we were forming, and how amazing it was all going to be. I just wanted to cry. I couldn’t let it out until I was home and locked myself in the bathroom. I felt so goddamn lonely. I almost wished for some annoying little punk to walk up to me and start up some shit, so I’d get in a fight and get sent home.

You might like the dorms. It looks like your new place, just… ten times smaller. I have space for the bed that comes with the room, the desk that comes with the room, the kitchenette, and the mattress that I – oh god it hurt inside – had to buy myself. Lou and Daniel are sharing it, she’s already bitching about it. She probably hoped it’ll all get better now that we’re in this fancy new country.

That's it, really. It was probably just as well that you didn’t come with me, I couldn’t fit you anywhere. (And don’t ever think we’d share the bed, hint hint) But I want you here anyway.

I hope things are okay at home. And that you can make rent. And that you can keep your job and that you stay in touch with Wendy. (Say hi from me) But more than anything, I want you here. Just so you know, because I know I’d never get to say it face to face. I cried all the way to Canada because I couldn’t even imagine how hard it’d be to stay here without you, but it’s much worse than I could’ve thought.

I miss you.

 

Aug 26 2010 23:18:34  
From: Adam Faulkner (justfckingadam@hotmail.com)  
To: Lawrence Gordon (lawrenceg@hotmail.com)  
Re: let’s try this email thing I guess

Hey. (That’s as close to cute openings I’ll ever get, but you probably knew that.)

No, that place doesn’t sound like a lot of fun for people who are not nerds. But it’s cool, I’m having the best time over here with my camera and my… empty apartment. Yeah, Wendy moved out. We didn’t get along very well towards the end, as you probably noticed. She was too broken up about you leaving. I guess I was too, but unlike her, I took it out on everyone else, including her and you. I’m probably not a lot of fun to be around when my best friend is moving to Canada.

But now I get to have all my beers to myself! And I don’t have to watch all these stupid fucking cartoons that you propped the kids up in front of when you were studying. And best of all, I get to sleep through the night without some asshole tossing and turning next to me.

Sarcasm doesn’t really come through in Email, does it? Sorry, I’ll try to stop. You said you missed me, I hope that means you also miss what a dumbass I am.

Are things better over there? And are the nightmares okay? Promise you won’t let this shit drag you down, Lawrence. I know that’s easy for me to say, but seriously, you worked so hard just to get there, away from all this. Don’t bring it to Canada. Leave it here, I’ll store it for you.

Leave your panic attacks with Adam, he’ll keep it stored and as good as new for when you get back from your lame college, ready to be used again! (sounds like a good business plan, doesn’t it? I’ll keep it in mind if the pictures never take off…)

Things are pretty much the same here. Except that I (wait for it) got coffee with Claire yesterday. It was kind of nice, especially considering how such a healthy behavior should’ve made my head explode.

Don’t be like that. It sucks enough as it is, knowing you’re this far away. Just remember that if it gets too hard, you can call in the middle of the… whenever the hell nighttime is over there, send a weird email, move back here, whatever you want. I’m here. It’ll be like you never left. But try to power through.

Oh, right, not to be insensitive or something, but… when are you coming back?

Wrong thing to ask? Fine.

Keep calm. Promise me that.

 

Jan 10 2011 21:42:02  
From: Lawrence Gordon (lawrenceg@hotmail.com)  
To: Adam Faulkner (justfckingadam@hotmail.com)   
Re: let’s try this email thing I guess

You know what? I got to watch a guy dissect a dead body today! And I was totally cool about it, not one bit nervous. No, I’m kidding. But I thought I’d be more freaked out than I was. And I won’t have to be around a bunch of dead people once I start med school. Unless I really fuck up, knock on wood. I hope people with a pulse are less scary than the ones without it.

I really wish I could’ve visited you over Christmas. Or that you could get over that stupid self-respect you have for once and nicked money off your parents, so you could’ve come here. Lou misses you a lot. Daniel’s getting kind of bummed out, but I don’t think he can put the reason into words. He probably hasn’t grasped that we won’t see you until we go back to the states. And to be honest, I don’t think I have, either…

Thanks for the Christmas card, though! You should’ve seen how happy it made me. Even though I look like shit in that picture. That’s pretty much the only picture you have of us together, isn’t it? I’ll never get why you spend so much time behind the camera and insist on putting me in front of it. God knows you’re the prettier one of the two of us.

I’m so sorry you didn’t get that job. There’ll be other shots, considering how goddamn talented you are. And I know you want to develop and whatnot (even though you’d never admit it) but try to keep in mind that you actually have a place of your own now. When we first met, you’d gladly have turned tricks to get there, remember?

It shouldn’t be physically possible to miss anyone as much as I miss you, but if I push myself I swear that my missing will break the laws of physics. Then I’ll have proven all the scientists wrong, and I won’t need a stupid degree, so… let’s get to work?

 

Jan 11 2011 12:13:57  
From: Adam Faulkner (justfckingadam@hotmail.com)  
To: Lawrence Gordon (lawrenceg@hotmail.com)  
Re: let’s try this email thing I guess

Seriously, Lawrence. I haven’t seen you in five months, and you feel that’s the best way to start your goddamn email? Fuck. I’m starting to think it was just as well that I didn’t go with you. But, good to hear that you didn’t crack. I never thought you would, though. Despite all the times I watched you hyperventilate over a C, I didn’t doubt for a second that you’d have a stone face while carving up a dead person. (Whether that’s actually a good thing, I’ll leave to interpretation)

It would’ve been awesome to see you, I know. But good that you liked the card. I thought about using the one I took after you passed out on the boardwalk after I forced you to try tequila, but I’ll save that for later. I’m thinking of release it to the press once you’ve gotten famous. And thanks for your card, even though it was late. I’ll hide it somewhere so no one knows how soft and squishy I get inside when looking at it.

Yeah, I’m trying to stay positive. It’s gross, but whatever. It just would’ve been fun to get some approval, you know? (Or, who am I kidding, of course you know) But you’re right. I’ve gone far. Now we just have to make sure you do, too, because no way I’ll let you be a housewife when you get back.

I actually called mom last night, believe it or not. Even weirder was that she actually seemed glad that I did. She told me dad was leaving for a business trip in a week, so I can come over for dinner if I want. Apparently she tried mentioning my name around him about a month after I left, and he told her that her behavior was tearing the family apart, and to emphasize that, he spent the rest of the evening passionately eye-fucking Maria.

Bitch, please. My missing could kick your missing’s ass.

 

Nov 15 04:38:17  
From: Adam Faulkner (justfckingadam@hotmail.com)  
To: Lawrence Gordon (lawrenceg@hotmail.com)  
Re: ska vi testa det här med mail eller?

I cant do this. I dont know why i thought i could. I cant do it. I want to go home. I want you to be here.

Adam can i please come back? Are you still mad at me? If you are i understand. Im so bad. I ruined everything. Im srory.

 

The morning he sees this is the first time Adam calls Lawrence. He has no idea how to reach him, so he finds the number to his school, tells the woman answering that she has to find Lawrence Gordon, it’s an emergency, and he’s probably in class, that’s where he usually is during emergencies.

Initially, Lawrence doesn’t want to come when a teacher walks in and tells him he has a call, partly because he knows that it’s Adam and he’ll break if he talks to him, and partly because it just feels wrong being called to the teacher’s lounge without a four years younger, pissed off Adam following him.

Adam barely greets him when he picks up the phone.

“What happened?” he almost yells, Lawrence can visualize him holding his phone with both hands, he does that when he’s under stress.

Lawrence tries to explain. He’d been in class, and the teacher had asked a question. He’d raised his hands, but so had the girl sitting in the desk in front of him. She got to answer the question, and when she was done talking, the teacher had looked at him, smiled and said: “what do you know, Lawrence _didn’t_ answer this one! That’s got to be a first for this semester.”

Adam waits for a continuation, but there is none. He doesn’t really see the connection between Lawrence’s story and the fact that twelve hours later, he was so panicked that he actually sent a mail confessing to it. Lawrence is silent. His silence even sounds wrong. Tears undermine his breaths, they’re about to crack. Adam wants to hold him.

Eventually, he opens his mouth. Runs fingers through his hair.

“Lawrence, you have to…” he says. That’s all he gets out. There’s nothing else to say.

Lawrence can’t cry. He has to get back to class soon. There are still miles of phone line between him and the only one who could get him to stop, so he cries quietly over the phone, Adam says nothing, eventually his breathing gets wrong, too.

 

Nov 28 2012 22:41:09  
From: Lawrence Gordon (lawrenceg@hotmail.com)   
To: Adam Faulkner (justfckingadam@hotmail.com)  
Re: let’s try this email thing I guess

Hey, Adam, I’m sososo sorry it’s taken me this long to reply. I’ve done nothing (and I mean nothing) but study these past few weeks. I’d probably collapse in a corner if it didn’t mean I’d miss out on valuable study time. It doesn’t exactly help with the nightmares or whatever the fuck they are. But don’t worry. It’s just two and a half years left.

And I’m sorry about that last Email. I understand how worried you must’ve been, and how stupid you probably felt when you called. Truth is, you can’t do a whole lot when I get like that. It helped when I knew you were always nearby, but now, it basically passes when it wants to pass. But I’m still glad you called. Thanks.

Right now, I’m doing a paper on how abnormal cell development affects patients mentally. And yeah, I know you think everything I do here is boring, but believe me, you’d find this crazy interesting. Wilde would’ve loved it. (You know, if he hadn’t been dead, and if he in life could’ve focused on anything besides banging anything with a pulse.) Lou’s kind of adjusted to school, even though she’d probably prefer to keep studying at home with me. It’s just barely, though. Her teacher had a talk with me earlier to tell me she’d given another student a bloody nose for calling her white trash. It made me think of you.

It’s easier for Daniel. He doesn’t even try to socialize with other kids, he just dives into the textbooks. It gets me worried sometimes, but I think he’ll be alright. As long as he doesn’t turn out like me.

How’s your new apartment working out? Are you making ends meet? Is it true what people say about Brooklyn, with all the hipsters and stuff? You should fit right in if it is. Please try not to drink all your money and get chlamydia from some skinny teenage poet. And occasionally do something besides work. If it gets too expensive, move to some other town. I know you get paid for way more time than you actually spend on your pictures, but you know… one of us acting this way is enough.

 

Dec 1 2012 17:29:38  
From: Adam Faulkner (justfckingadam@hotmail.com)  
To: Lawrence Gordon (lawrenceg@hotmail.com)  
Re: let’s try this email thing I guess

For fucks sake, I’ve told you a billion time to go to the health clinic and talk to the councilor. You’ve got one on campus, USE IT. I’m not trying to dump you on someone else or whatever, but you need more help than I can give you via email. Do you get how fucking hard it is to know that you feel like shit and not being able to do anything about it? The least you can do if you want to do something for me is to take care of yourself.

You don’t have to be polite with me, dumbass. You should write to me when you don’t feel well, that’s not what bugs me. It’s that you need someone who’s actually there. I’ll call you every day if you want to, but I don’t think you do.

I know this makes me suck as an adult, but I laughed my ass off when I read the part about Lou. Tell her to keep it up. Yeah, I know there are “more constructive” ways to deal with assholes, but she shouldn’t let anyone put her down. She’s too cool for that. It’s Daniel I’m worried about. If he starts bawling when he gets a B on an assignment or fling around through the night, promise me you’ll hide his textbooks for a bit?

Brooklyn is the best. You should’ve seen me when I first got off the Greyhound, I looked like those little girls from the countryside when they first see the big city. “Oh my, the houses are as tall as the sky!” But yeah, everyone living her is a pretentious douche.

Getting by as a student isn’t that bad, actually. We were pretty good at turning pennies, and honestly, I wouldn’t move from here if they kicked me to the curb. I’m having the time of my life. I get to do something I think is fun, and on these blocks, photography is suddenly a highly respected line of profession. Also, the fact that I’m young and pale with a leather jacket and sunken eyes apparently only adds to it. Who would’ve thought that’d be of use one day?

I don’t give a shit if you’re writing a paper on how to be a better fuck; unless you want me to get over there and tell your cute classmates that your best friends doesn’t eat his vegetables every day (I assume that’s something deeply shameful in those circles), you better write a little more often. Brooklyn is a ride, but you’d like it here, too. And I’ve got a queen bed now.

 

Oct 20 2013 04:07:31  
From: Lawrence Gordon (lawrenceg@hotmail.com)   
To: Adam Faulkner (justfckingadam@hotmail.com)  
Re: let’s try this email thing I guess

Hey, Adam. I’ve been slow as shit again, sorry about that. How are things?

I have little under two years left here. I don’t even understand how I made it this far. Or, I wouldn’t have if it weren’t for the therapy. And the pills, of course. But when I’m done here, I can start med school in the states. I already looked it up.

That’s great news, that you got hired by that magazine! I wish I knew more of what your pictures look like now days, I can only assume you’ve developed plenty. Can you send some of them?

Lou says hi, btw. She says that upper cut you showed her came of use last week. I’m going to pretend I don’t get what she means… 

 

Oct 25 2013 22:31:48  
From: Adam Faulkner (justfckingadam@hotmail.com)  
To: Lawrence Gordon (lawrenceg@hotmail.com)  
Re: let’s try this email thing I guess

Well, what do you know. Doctor Gordon is still alive. He hasn’t died from some freaky infection he caught from a body he dissected, searching for a cure for a virus that wreaks a tribe of cannibals in Papua New Guinea. Then I can only assume you’re writing a paper on said virus? No? Then I’m at a loss.

Things are cool here. The editorial staff at this magazine has begun to adjust to my presence, but you should’ve seen the first couple of days. I was constantly terrified and walked around looking like I was tripping for two weeks until they warmed up to me. I think the girls are just happy there’s a dude here who’s below fifty and doesn’t have a beer gut.

You’ll get your ass across that border the second you’re done there, that’s all there is to it. You haven’t started to like Canada, have you? You don’t want to stay over there with their queens and hockey and their weird money and shit? Come ooon, I know you miss the expensive fucking health care and massive outbreak of drug related crimes up in this bitch. And me, obviously.

Lou’s growing up to be… me. That’s not good. Tell her to cut it out. Then again, if the option is to be like you… fuck, that girl needs more male role models.

I’m in Chicago for Claire’s birthday, so I took a tour around our old blocks. I went to that store where we could get beer without getting ID’d. Thought about going inside, but I don’t think they’d like that… they probably haven’t forgotten the time we went there shit-faced, I pointed to the clerk and yelled that he was an outlaw, and you had to drag me outside.

 

Apr 5 2014 15:49:15  
From: Adam Faulkner (justfckingadam@hotmail.com)  
To: Lawrence Gordon (lawrenceg@hotmail.com)  
Re: let’s try this email thing I guess

Dude, seriously. If you don’t get back to me soon, I’ll have to spend a bunch of money on a steak knife and a plane ticket just to get up there and cut you. And that seems kind of unnecessary.

 

Apr 21 2014 18:17:42  
From: Adam Faulkner (justfckingadam@hotmail.com)  
To: Lawrence Gordon (lawrenceg@hotmail.com)  
Re: !

LAWRENCE.

 

Jun 8 2014 17:54:27  
From: Adam Faulkner (justfckingadam@hotmail.com)  
To: Lawrence Gordon (lawrenceg@hotmail.com)  
Re: !

Can I at least know that you’re alive? This is exactly what I was scared would happen when you left.


	29. Through the Years

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can I just take a minute to say that I launched this story on FF.Net as the first fic I'd ever write where Adam and Lawrence weren't romantically involved   
> and it's so weird to think of now because I can't for the life of me remember what I even originally planned to be the endgame like what would the plot be

When he’s twenty-five, Adam tries fucking a girl for the first time since Lawrence left.

He gets drunk to even be able to follow through, plus do it from behind, and to highest extent possible, avoid looking at her. At first, it goes okay. Then she starts whining and moaning, sort of like Lawrence used to do at night, and then Adam gets up, gathers his clothes and stumbles out the door. He’s flaccid again before he’s down the stairs.

xxxxxxxxx

A few years later, when he moves again, he finds the only picture he has of him and Lawrence together. He’s young in it. He looks happy, and has no idea how his life is going to be.

Adam throws the picture out, entirely unfeeling.

xxxxxxxxx

About seven years after Lawrence gets married, he has to start taking sedatives again. Not because he wants to, he argues against it with all he’s got and it’s dangerously close to becoming their first fight since Alison told him she was pregnant. But she gives him an ultimatum. He has to be available to be a good father. He has to think about how this affects them. He has to stop being selfish.

Lawrence gets the impression that all this is a way for her to not have to say that she just doesn’t want to see him this way.

He visits his psychiatrist and asks for a renewed prescription. When asked why, he unravels the whole thing, doesn’t have the energy to hold back. Sits in the IKEA chair and reveals his ulcer, his sleep deprivation, his daughter whom he can go days without seeing even though they’re both in the same apartment, and while he’s at it, the hallucinations, anxiety, panic, panic ever present.

In the end, he gets a prescription for a sedative, antidepressants, and a pamphlet about breathing exercises that are supposed to help with panic attacks. Lawrence gets it filled, puts the pill bottles in the back of the medicine cabinet so Diana won’t find them. Alison gives him a look, he rolls his eyes and puts them in his briefcase, instead. Realizes that he’s not home enough for pill bottles in his medicine cabinet to really mean anything.

Alison is with him every morning, dinnertime and night, visits the hospital if he’s not at home when it’s time for him to take his pills, because she doesn’t trust him to do it, which is kind of called for. Sometimes she forces him to stick his tongue out after taking them to make sure he swallowed.

Lawrence very rarely loses his temper. Especially not with her, and he doesn’t do it now, either. But Alison has never seen as much hatred in his eyes as he has when looking at the pills, the yellow and the brown bottle, has to be in his briefcase every day, or he’ll explode.

xxxxxxxxx

“It was like, you know, like, a  _revelation,”_  Lou says. She’s had her gigantic teacup in front of her lips for the past five minutes, but too much to tell them to even have time to drink. She managed to be the last one among the siblings to start college, she waited out them both to think of something she actually wanted to do instead of something she felt like she had to. Lawrence forces himself to think of that as something positive, and Daniel’s too kind to really be jealous, but the more Lou tells them, the more his gaze starts flickering onto the table, the stiffer his hands get on his muffin.

“Cause I’ve still had my doubts,” Lou goes on. “I really had. Like, I did. But I got it, right then. That this is what I want to do. It really is.”

She slows down a bit, and finally takes a sip of her tea. Lawrence and Daniel exchange a glance across the table. None of them know why this feels so wrong.

“You’re not nervous at all?” Daniel finally asks. His gaze is stuck in his coffee. Lou shakes her head.

“I’m not. Really. Just happy.”

Lawrence nods. He wants to think of something to say, something to convey that he’s absolutely thrilled that she’s doing something she finds meaningful, but can’t think of anything. He realizes that he’d actually prefer if she was a wreck, like he was when he started med school, and wants to splash his face with his scolding hot tea.

Lou looks between him and Daniel. She doesn’t feel anything slight, which is why her bubbly joy has turned into icy cold rage in less than a second.

“Sorry, did I say happy?” she says, every word dripping with venom. “I’m about to crack. I’m totally fucking terrified. I’m about to call Lawrence and whine that  _I can’t do this_. Better?”

Daniel meets her gaze with one equally dark.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he hisses. “Just cause I don’t… I…”

He stutters, quiets, looks down, his face scarlet. Lou immediately looks less angry, but she’d never apologize, so they sit in silence. Lou puts her teacup down, there’s blood red lipstick on the rim.

“I didn’t turn out like you guys,” she says. “Does that have to be a problem? That I’m not a train wreck? Do I only count as one of you if I can’t handle pressure?”

Lawrence doesn’t know what to say. Daniel keeps staring into his cup. There are tears in his eyes.

“It’s just hard to get used to,” Lawrence finally says.

He looks around her apartment. It looks exactly like her. Disorganized and loved to bits. And the only reason he thinks she looks so small in the light from the tall kitchen window is that it’s the way he’ll always see her, not because that’s what she’s really like.

It’s not even true that it’s hard for him to accept that she’s doing well. It  _shouldn’t_  be true. This was what he always wanted for her.

Lou rolls her eyes and reaches into her pocket for her cigarettes.

“Look, I love you guys,” she says wearily and puts a cigarette between her lips. “You know that. But am I the only one who’s getting sick of this discussion? The whole… ‘we have to let mom fuck up our lives or we’re doing something wrong?’ Isn’t that fucking stupid when you think about it?”

Lawrence looks into the table, too. Ashamed.

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s really stupid.”

Lou shakes her head, lighting her smoke. They’re quiet for a while longer. Daniel’s breathing has gone back to normal. When he looks up, Lou smiles at him that way, that thing they have that not even Lawrence understands.

“You ever wish mom could’ve been a properly shitty mom?” she then says.

Lawrence raises his eyebrows.

“No. What do you mean?”

“I mean…” Lou says, throwing her hand out. “Everyone in those whiny autobiographies are always like ‘my mom was a drunk who burned me with cigarettes,’ or ‘my mom was a religious fanatic who whipped me when I got my period.’ Like, how was our mom  _really_  that bad?”

“She did hit us,” Lawrence says with a small smile. “And she liked her beer.”

“Yeah…” Lou says absentmindedly and turns to the window. Her face gets almost white in the sunlight, slim fingers around her cigarette.

The association to Adam hits Lawrence like a punch to the gut. He hasn’t thought about him in almost a decade.

“But that wasn’t what really hurt, you know?” she then says.

xxxxxxxxx

Diana’s teacher calls Lawrence at work when she’s in second grade. She tells him that Diana’s reading skills are on the level of a five year old. That she has no problems interacting with other kids, but she has troubles focusing. That they need to talk about this at home.

“Or maybe home is part of the problem?” the teacher says. Her compassion feels hollow and sticky. Lawrence hangs up.

He tries talking to Diana when he picks her up from school. She shuts down completely. Arms crossed, glaring out the window.

“You have to tell us when you don’t understand something,” Lawrence says, putting a hand on her knee. “There’s nothing we can’t work out, okay? You can learn anything, you’re so smart. But mommy and I have to know what to help you with.”

Diana still won’t look at him. The helplessness he feels as a father sometimes overpowers the many times that she makes him incredibly happy.

“Honey. Is it so bad to ask for help?”

“No.” She seems to disagree with him just to disagree with him.

“Then what is it?”

“I just don’t want to.” Her voice is creaking.

“Why not?”

Diana almost dislocates her neck with her efforts to hide her face from him.

“Di? What is it?”

“You-you’d just get mad at me…”

Then she starts crying, still turned to the window, in the corner of his eye, Lawrence sees her angrily rubbing her hand against her cheeks. He doesn’t want to ask why she thinks he’d get mad. She probably has a list of things he’s made her think are his opinions on her, just by having them about himself.

“Honey…”

He puts his hand on her knee again, trying to comfort her while keeping one eye on the road ahead. 

xxxxxxxxx

“Lawrence, get up. Car crash.”

Lawrence moans and rolls out of bed. His limbs wake up before he does, flails to his feet and out the door of the on call room before everything’s in place in his head.

Night shifts aren’t a problem to him. His sleeping schedule has never been healthy, and there’s no point in trying to fix it anymore. Why would he sleep like a normal person if he earns more money sleeping in half hour cycles?

“What’s the story?” he asks Stephanie as they stride through the hallway to the OR. She’s tiny, almost has to run to keep up.

“Twenty-six year old female,” she says. “Six months pregnant. Lost a lot of blood. Her leg was stuck under the car for half an hour before the paramedics got her out, you might have to amputate.

Lawrence shakes his head as they enter the prep room. Stephanie rolls her eyes.

“Could you for once look past your weird fucking obsessions?” she hisses as they wash their hands.

“No,” Lawrence says.

Lawrence sees the patient through the window. When he was younger, he could barely do surgeries if the patient’s face wasn’t covered up. This would’ve been a luxury, working on someone’s leg. But now days, it just feels stupid with that green fabric stretched out by the woman’s waist. As if enough of them haven’t died for him to know exactly how human the person on that table is.

Lawrence scrubs his hands for ten minutes before entering the OR. All according to the protocol, so much so that the skin on his hands is red and flaky and he’s withering, but you can’t see it when he’s wearing the gloves.

“Blood pressure 120 by 80,” the assisting nurse says. “Deteriorating pulse, heavy bleeding from right femoral artery.”

“Kelly clamps,” Lawrence says and puts his mask on.

He walks up to the table, standing in front of the patient’s leg. It looks like it’s been torn open by one of the monsters he sees when he has an anxiety attack.

Lawrence doesn’t notice it, but he takes a deep, sort of quivering breath before putting the clamp on the ripped artery. But he’s not nervous, just determined.

He and Stephanie have argued about this in the past, more than once. She’s the only one who knows that he’s refusing to amputate this woman’s leg, and that he probably would do it, if she hadn’t been pregnant.

With moms, he’d rather see them dead than incapacitated. 

xxxxxxxx

Stephanie comes to find him afterwards. He’s sitting in the cafeteria, staring at the clock on the wall.

“Have you considered therapy?” she asks.

It could’ve been a joke, but it’s not.

“Seems kind of dull,” Lawrence says.

She’s not satisfied with that. She walks up to the chair across from him, leans against it like she wants to mark her distance.

“Just because it’s worked this far doesn’t mean it’s going to keep working. She could’ve died. The kid, too.”

“You could see it as further proof that I’m amazingly talented,” Lawrence says, looking at her firmly.

Stephanie stares back. Lawrence gives up and looks at his coffee cup.

“Like you said, it’s worked this far. This isn’t my first emergency case.”

“You keep saying that,” she says, annoyed. “You’ll get by on being a great surgeon for a while, but there are limits to that, too. What happens when you have an off day? Or when you get nearsighted? That’s coming sooner than you think. Will you learn then? Or just keep doing what you’re doing out of stubbornness?”

Lawrence smiles bitterly and looks at her again. She’s always been the only nurse that dares talking to him like this, even when she was new at the job. And they still worked together for three months until he managed to learn her name.

“That sounds like something I could do,” he says. “When you’ve been at this for a while, you’ll learn how much old shit still affects you at the worst of times. Stuff you thought you could handle, and that you  _should_  be able to handle.”

Stephanie shakes her head. Finally smiles slightly.

“God, that’s depressing.”

“I know,” Lawrence says, taking a sip of his coffee. “And how much do you think I have in my baggage? Being a hundred and fifty years old?”

Her smile widens. He was hoping she’d sit down with him, but eventually, Stephanie turns around and leaves. Lawrence is left with his gross coffee and thought of what he just said.

When he was an intern, and hadn’t talked to his mom in five years, he used to dream of the day he finally counted as a Real Doctor. There’d be a huge disaster, maybe a terrorist attack or something, and everyone would stand there, completely dumbfounded, and some hysterical nurse would say: “what should we do?” and someone would answer: “we need doctor Gordon.”

He’s had an emergency like that during his time here. There’d been a pile-up somewhere, and he found out afterwards that the assisting surgeon had asked for him specifically. But standing at the table, saw the woman in front of him, someone had said that they’d managed to save her kid, and then Lawrence had said something about how he felt a little dizzy and didn’t want to risk such an important procedure.

He’d been a practicing surgeon for three years, and actually managed to become the big name he’s always wanted. But he couldn’t do this.

It’s been seventeen years since he talked to his mom by now. And she still has that grip on him.

He tried talking to Alison about this at some point. That was long after he’d told her everything; his childhood, the panic attacks, the nail biting. She said that it doesn’t really have to be that way, even if he’d paralyze someone from the waist down, it wouldn’t necessarily mean that the patient became completely incapacitated, it’d just put them in a wheelchair, and prosthetics are available. She said it in a tone like she was glad to pass this knowledge on, since he clearly hadn’t gotten this, and now he could finally relax.

She’s never really understood how little logic there is in Lawrence’s fear. The absolute absurdity that they even had to have this discussion.

It’s every bit as depressing as Stephanie said, and he’ll still have to drag it around for god knows how long. All of mom’s shit, that he had no choice but to carry back then.

He doesn’t even know where he’d be without it.

How would he have gotten anywhere without all the anger? All the resentment towards her? If he hadn’t had anything to run from, getting Lou and Daniel away from, would he have had any motivation at all? Isn’t there a huge risk that he’d still be stuck in Somna?

There’s no point in discussing this with Lou or Daniel. They barely remember it, all those years, and thus don’t see it as a part of who they are. Not even Daniel, who’s always been the more analytical one, thinks about it, and if he does, he doesn’t talk about it.

Lawrence brought it up with him a while back. Daniel had just finished his first day at university, and called Lawrence right afterwards to tell him he was dropping out. For the first time in his career, Lawrence asked to get his shift covered to go there, sit with Daniel outside the school, hold him as he cried and then take him to get coffee.

It took him a while to get Daniel to talk. Once he got started, it was all about how this wasn’t for him, he wasn’t good enough, he didn’t know why he ever thought he was.

“No one else in there even  _needs_  the degree,” Daniel muttered and glared at the people moving past their table. “It’s just for the resume. Like ‘look, I’m not only super smart and amazing and know everything, I also have a degree in journalism!’ They started writing novels when they were fifteen. And they have nice clothes and they… they know this. I don’t.”

Lawrence sighed. It was kind of sad that the only times Daniel talked this much was when he was in the middle of a breakdown.

“Have you even talked to any of the other students?” he asked gently. “Or do you just look at them and then think of their back story yourself?”

Daniel didn’t answer him. Lawrence leaned forward.

“You wouldn’t have thought any of this if it weren’t for mom. You know that? You’re going to let her ruin this for you?”

Daniel glanced at him. Then he looked into his coffee cup, smiling emptily.

“I still can’t eat ice cream,” he finally said. It didn’t even sound like he was talking to Lawrence. “Really. It’s impossible. I don’t even remember what it was like to live with her, but whenever I eat something cold, it’s like… I’m back there. In Somna.” 

Lawrence hadn’t heard him say the name of the town before. He wasn’t sure why it felt so definite. Combined with the way Daniel was staring into his coffee cup. Like they’d never gotten out of there.

“We were cold a lot when we lived there,” Lawrence eventually said. “It almost killed you once. It’s not weird that you’re still scared of cold things, and it’s not a huge problem, either. You probably won’t be in a situation where it’s crucial that you eat an ice cream cone. I just don’t want someone haven’t seen in twelve years to make you think you can’t write on a professional level, because you _can._ You really do.”

Daniel sighed, looking up again.

“I can write in my bedroom,” he said, trying to sound angry, but mostly just sounded desperate. “Not at a university. Not with teachers and group discussions and shit. It’s not me.”

Lou’s a bit too cool to talk about this stuff, even though she remembers more of it than Daniel. Probably more than Lawrence, too, since it’s remarkable how much you can forget when you don’t want to remember. He can still sometimes see the traces it left with her, like her general suspicion towards men, her neuroticism about money, her almost uncontrollable anger when she feels ignored. But it hasn’t ruined her the way it did her brothers. There actually is a chance she’ll be the only one in their family who turns into something more than a self-destructive mess.

“Come _ooon,”_ she moaned when he dropped her off on her first day of law school and suddenly got so sentimental that she had to wriggle out of his arms.

Then she saw the way he looked at her, and hugged him tight. When she finally let him go, she looked up at him, smiling encouragingly. She knew exactly why this was so big to him.

“Someone has to take care of the women in this fucking country,” she said.

To Lou, it really is that simple. To Lawrence, it never will be. He could’ve kept her there for an hour, explaining how she only thought that way because they grew up the way they did. But even if he had, she wouldn’t have wanted to hear it.

The only times Lou brings up their old life is when she asks about Adam. And when she does, Lawrence just wants her to shut up.

She asks if Lawrence ever sees him. If he misses him. If Lawrence even gets how much of their current life they owe to him.

Lawrence can’t think of one time he’s given a straight answer to any of those questions. All he knows is that when he hears them, he feels so bad and all together rotten that he’d gladly rip out any vital organ if it ridded him of the feeling.

When he was in college, he used to like thinking about Adam. The thought that no matter how terrible things were now, even though darkness felt like it was pressing in on him from every angle at night, cornered him to find the slightest crack in his armor, and even though he had to study for every available second to avoid it, it’d be okay later on. He’d finish this goddamn course, and then finally go back home. He’d find Adam and tell him all those things he never said, the things he never had the time for. He’d make things good again.

Then he stopped writing. Then he stopped thinking of Adam, because he couldn’t stand the idea of failing. Not with something as important as him.

Lawrence sighs and looks at the time. It’s almost eight o’clock. He gets up, takes his cell phone out, leaving the cold coffee on the table, and during the walk back to the on call room for another couple hours of sleep, he talks to his daughter. A few minutes of sweet talking nonsense before she goes to school, and he knows he’ll get through the rest of the day. He forgets sometimes that other people can make him feel that way.

Lawrence can sleep until lunchtime, then he’s due at the free clinic. They always need more people on weekends. Bar fights, DUIs. Men who are nice sometimes, but not when they’ve been drinking. All those things happening in a totally different universe.

Lawrence is happy to assist. He doesn’t even have to see his daughter as long as he gets to do this.

He walks up to the nurse’s station, putting his hands on the counter. One of the nurses looks up with lazy wonder.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” Lawrence says. “You got any good patients?”

The nurse slides a chart across the counter.

“He’s already in the exam room,” he says. “Stabbed in the arm.”

Lawrence thanks him and goes to the examination room. Skims through the papers while walking, and keeps doing it while entering the room. He hasn’t made eye contact with a patient in a decade or so, why should this one be any different?

“Okay,” he says as the door falls shut behind him, still with his face in the chart. Thirty-five year old male, no extended previous hospital stays… “Looks like you need some stitches?”

“All these years and you couldn’t even be bothered to get a new hair cut?”

That’s the first thing Adam says to Lawrence in sixteen years.


	30. Paper Cups

Lawrence remains staring into his papers a few seconds too long. Part of him wants to look up, because no, it’s impossible… and he still knows that it’s exactly the way he thinks it is, and what the hell is he supposed to do when Adam’s here, physically, in front of him?

Adam scoffs.

“Good to see you, too.”

Lawrence slowly closes the clipboard. That’s the biggest change of circumstances he can handle at the moment. When he looks up, he does so bit by bit, up the length of Adam’s legs, worn jeans, holes at the knees, hasn’t changed at all since… then.

He looks at the hem of the leather jacket. It’s the same one, he’s sure of it, even though it’s even more tattered now. He could’ve picked out the leather jacket Adam wore when they were young from a lineup of a thousand, all the times they were out walking, Adam pointed at something and it creaked wearily at his joints. That thought scares him so much that he almost can’t look at Adam’s face, but does it anyway, is met with a gaze that’s excited and pissed off.

He used to tell Adam that he’d have to inject testosterone in order to get facial hair, but he does have some stubble. Hair’s longer, curling by his temples. He’s barely grown any taller. It’s still him. Lawrence isn’t sure why he’s struck with such heavy anxiety that he almost feels faint.

Or, yeah, he knows what it is. It’s the little wrinkles by Adam’s eyes. It’s all wrong. Lawrence wants to smooth them out, rip them off his skin.

Adam’s almost twenty years older than the last time he saw him. It’s a totally logical turn of events. And yet he’d feel so much better if he were facing a nineteen year-old punk who looked at Lawrence like they stood and fell together. Lawrence wants to puke.

When he sees the way Adam looks at him now, he knows it’s not the time.

“You haven’t changed all that much yourself,” he says, smiling.

Adam seems unsure if he should be angry that that’s all Lawrence has to say. Eventually, he can’t help but smiling back, and then, not even Lawrence can be scared, which surprises him. He’d forgotten that someone could calm him down so swiftly.

They remain like that for a bit. It’s Adam that eventually gives up, turns his right side to him, showing an ugly, glistening wound, like a mouth grinning through the leather. Lawrence’s stomach tightens again. It’s hard to stay in the doctor role sometimes. Even though he can’t remember the last time he could step out of it when he actually needed to.

“You’re just going to stand there?” Adam sighs and gestures to the cut. “It might not look right if I bleed out with you staring at it.”

Lawrence flinches and starts looking around for supplies.

“Right,” he says absentmindedly and takes a cotton ball from the cart next to him. “If you’ll take off your jacket…”

Adam wrestles out of it. Lawrence sits on the stool with wheels, leans forward and starts cleaning the edges of the wound. He’d prefer having to do it without looking at it. He’s always struggled with seeing Adam hurt, despite all the glimpses he caught of bruises that Adam tried hiding under his sleeves. Even though he hasn’t seen him in years, seeing Adam’s knife wound hurts more than seeing anyone else on the brink of death.

“How’d you even get this?” he asks, reaching for the alcohol bottle. “This is going to sting…”

Adam sucks breath through his teeth as he starts cleaning the cut. Lawrence tries to tune out.

“Bar beef,” Adam says, his voice shaking slightly. “I spilled my drink on this dude. Turned out he had a knife, and, well…”

Lawrence gives him a glance, putting a hand on his shoulder to keep him still.

“It’s just past noon,” he says. “You got this today?”

He straightens his back, throwing the cotton ball in the trash, doesn’t take his eyes off Adam. Adam won’t look back. He tightens his jaw in a way that Lawrence suddenly remembers used to worry him.

“There was a four hour wait,” Adam says with a shrug, an undertone slightly too shrill to come off as calm as he tries to. “But… yeah.”

He quiets down. For a moment, he looks tired of pretending.

“I don’t have a whole lot going on,” he eventually mutters, cautious about looking into the floor.

That infliction used to worry him, too.

They’re quiet for a bit. Then Adam looks at Lawrence again, Lawrence is reminded that he’s still working, and goes to get the needle and dissolvent thread.

“This is going to hurt a little, too,” he says, threading the needle.

“Worse than getting slashed by a fucking biker?” Adam says, in a tone like Lawrence’s idiocy is kind of adorable.

Then Lawrence puts the needle through his skin, and Adam grits his teeth again, but an annoyed moan slips out. Lawrence wants to say something comforting, but as he opens his mouth, he realizes that he has no idea what that would be.

He hasn’t cared about his patients for so long that his entire soothing vocabulary is gone the second he puts his coat on. When Diana has nightmares or is worried that he won’t come home, he can be the sweetest dad. But the notion that he’s not allowed to get emotional when he’s here runs deep, and now he can’t get rid of it.

But while stitching Adam up, holding his arm to keep him from wriggling away, he doesn’t feel the way he usually does in these situations. Not just because it’s Adam, but because his coat suddenly feels too big. Like he put it on when he was sixteen and is still waiting to grow into it.

“Aren’t you done yet?” Adam growls. His hand is clenching next to him. The fine scars on his knuckles stand out from the skin.

“One second,” Lawrence mumbles.

It doesn’t take long before he can straighten up and put the needle aside. He glances across Adam’s pained expression and hates himself tremendously.

“You want a lollipop?” he teases while picking up gauze, wraps them over the stitches.

“Fuck you,” Adam says. “It hurt.”

“I know. Sorry. But we’re done now.”

 _You can go now._ That’s what he’d usually say. He’s probably saying it with his eyes now, too, because Adam looks at him, and his face, which was starting to look calmer, suddenly has a shadow cast across it.

“Awesome,” he says. “Thanks.”

His voice is completely flat. When he stands up, Lawrence is struck with sudden and inexplicable panic.

“You know what?” he almost shouts as Adam’s putting his jacket on, “you look kind of frazzled. I should probably set you up with a room and an IV, just to get your energy back.”

“You think?” Adam says.

He’s definitely happy, but for some reason, doesn’t really seem to believe him.

“Sure,” Lawrence babbles on and takes his gloves off. “My shift is done in three hours, I could… I could come by to check on you. We could get coffee. From the cafeteria. It tastes like shit, but…”

Adam grins. It’s the first untainted smile Lawrence has seen since he got here.

“We’ve probably had worse,” he says as he gets up.

Instant coffee they basically rationed out when they lived together. Drank in the middle of the night, on the mattress they shared.

“I’d say,” Lawrence says as they walk out.

xxxxxxxxx

Lawrence knows that most doctors and nurses, no matter how jaded they are when they’ve gone on as long as he is, entered their field with good intentions. They walked through the hallways like it was their first time, completely blown away by themselves and all the amazing prospects.

It’s the same hallways they run through now without looking up, sure. But in the beginning, they walked around thinking they’d make a difference.

They’d make the patients feel better, not just physically, but on every level. They’d make them love themselves again, no matter what else was going on in their lives. The patients were supposed to get their lives back, it’d be like in the movies.

It’s kind of funny, Lawrence thinks, that all the doctors and nurses passing them now without a second glance, have no idea that everything they tried to accomplish is happening right now, at this table, where Adam and he are sitting, drinking gross coffee out of paper cups.

Adam’s still nervous. Lawrence isn’t sure what he expected to happen when he came here, but this obviously wasn’t it. He twists in his seat, pauses regularly to sweep invisible dirt off the table. Lawrence doesn’t mind. He has no idea why this was so scary before, but it’s calmed down now, and he can watch Adam’s anxious habits and feel like it’s sixteen years ago.

“How about the family?” he asks. “Did you stay in touch with parts of it?”

“The old fucker’s gone,” Adam says, not a trace of remorse in his voice, eyes steady on his cup. “I think they got divorced, but couldn’t be fucked to care. Mom and I talk on the phone sometimes, see each other on birthdays… and believe it or not, but Claire actually turned out to be kind of cool when she finally got out of the house. Maybe because she didn’t get her ass kick quite as often.”

The last sentence is the first sincere thing out of his mouth since they sat down. Lawrence nods slowly. He barely remembers Claire, he remembers light grey eyes that looked like Adam’s, but happier. But now that he hears it again, he remembers the tone Adam’s voice got when he talked about her, at least after he stopped hating her. Kind of bitter, but mostly proud.

“You used to say you were gonna be chief of surgery or something before you turned thirty-five,” Adam then says, with a small smile. “Did you pull it off? You only got a couple of months left, right?”

Lawrence smiles, too, blushing.

“Not quite,” he says. “But I’m what they call a candidate of interest.”

Adam nods. When he dares to look up, Lawrence is met with a smile that’s almost overwhelmingly proud.

“I counted on that,” he says softly, like he doesn’t want anyone else to hear.

Lawrence hoped he wouldn’t blush further, but it definitely feels like it.

“But hey,” Adam says after a break, “we need to have a talk about you not managing to get married.”

Lawrence looks at his left hand, rubs his thumb across the spot where the wedding ring used to be. That intense heat he felt from the previous thing Adam said is turned into something else. Not necessarily something bad.

“Well…” he says absentmindedly. “I used to be. Now I just have a cute girl waiting for me to pick her up from school.”

“School? Figures you’d get a younger girl after getting divorced, but please tell me she’s at least in college.”

Lawrence laughs.

“Just twelve, actually. The only one I can make things work with. Diana.”

“Preppy ass name,” Adam says, finishing his coffee. “You’ll fuck her up permanently. Got any pictures?”

Lawrence shows him some of the pictures in his phone. He hasn’t managed to get one of just him and Diana, so he still has the ones with all three of them. He immediately notices the shift in Adam’s eyes when seeing Alison with Lawrence’s arms around her.

“Why didn’t it work out?” he asks as Lawrence puts his phone back in his pocket.

“I fuck everything up,” Lawrence says. “Especially relationships. Or just especially with her. I’d probably do better with someone who didn’t expect anything from me.”

Adam smiles. It doesn’t reach his eyes.

“Get a hooker.”

Pause.

“You don’t seem to have found anyone, either.”

Lawrence knows it was the wrong thing to say the second it comes out. Jaw muscles shift by Adam’s temples, but he does his best to play along.

“Did you think I would?” He tries, but just sounds pissed. “If you fuck everything up, I take everything, run it through a blender and throw the blender out the window.”

Lawrence doesn’t even try to act like it’s a joke. If he did, it wouldn’t matter. Adam doesn’t look at him when he says it.

They’re quiet for a bit. It’s up to Adam to restart the conversation; Lawrence has no idea when he’s allowed to talk.

“What’s up with Lou and Daniel?” Adam finally asks, almost sounds dejected, leans his head in his hand. “You didn’t bring them up.”

There’s an attempt. Doesn’t reach all the way. But not even when they were young and barely had it in them to try, was that a reason to give up.

“Yeah…” Lawrence says. “Daniel’s got two years left until he gets a degree in journalistic writing. He’s still not a talker, but he doesn’t need to be. You should see what he gets onto paper. And Lou’s looking for work as a lawyer.”

No matter how angry Adam was with Lawrence, it melts away when he hears that. His face opens up in one of those untainted smiles. Lawrence hadn’t really grasped until now that Adam had no idea what’s become of his siblings over the past years. He was one of the most important people in their lives when they were kids, and he doesn’t know the amazing grownups they turned into.

“Now that you say it, it makes total sense,” Adam says.

“Right?” Lawrence says, smiling. “Specialized in women’s rights.”

Adam raises his eyebrows tiredly.

“Of course.”

“All the dudes in her college were terrified of her,” Lawrence goes on. “I think she’s one of the few students who seriously didn’t consider it up to men to defend women who they didn’t give a shit about until the election year.”

Adam chuckles. They’re quiet for a bit. He fidgets with his empty paper cup, apparently deep in thought.

“What about Daniel,” he asks in a different tone. “Is he okay?”

Lawrence doesn’t answer right away.

“He’s fine,” he settles for. “I guess he’s kind of… troubled. And sometimes, when he feels ignored… when he tries to get his point across, and people don’t get it or want to listen, he gets… he almost panics, the way I used to.”

The last part just slips out, and he silences abruptly. Fuck. They shouldn’t talk about this stuff. It goes too far back. A seeking hand reaching inside his white coat.

Adam stares at him through the entire monologue, like he’s trying to look straight through him. Or like he already has and doesn’t like what he sees.

That look scares Lawrence, so he doesn’t say anything else. It still takes Adam a few seconds to start talking.

“You know what happened to your mom?” he asks.

Lawrence takes a deep breath.

“Yes. Yeah, I know.”

“Right,” Adam says sharply and leans across the table. “And you know what happened to Wendy?”

He’s not holding anything back anymore. Lawrence really sees what he’s done, what he discarded, and is suddenly twenty again, in his dorm room, nightmares-or-whatever-it-was are back, but it’s the first time he’s had to suffer through them alone, trying to keep his panic attacks silent so he doesn’t wake up the kids.

There again, wanted nothing more than having Adam there with him. In the meantime as his fear actually had a reason then. Whatever woke up him up in the nights had a theme, and it was always about his old life.

Kept waking up with the paralyzing fear of being sent back. Getting caught. Like with that woman behind the counter at the airport.

Lawrence remembers when he found out about Wendy’s death. He doesn’t remember who told him, but he remembers it was pointless. That things had been okay, she had a job, rented a room somewhere. And then she got caught between two dealers settling a feud.

Lawrence likes to believe he remembers the time when this information reached him, but it’s not true. All he remembers is sleepless nights, every light in the apartment was on and he screamed at the slightest sound. He remembers Diana running away if he even tried to approach her, and he remembers Alison sleeping at her mom’s place for a week, since she couldn’t stand seeing him like this.

And that thought, over and over, until it felt like his head was cracking open.

_I left her behind._

Just like he left mom.

Left Adam.

Adam’s sitting across from him looking like he’s wanted to say this for years, which he probably has. Lawrence suddenly wishes he’d go away. He’s gone to so many therapists to make it easier to suppress this feeling.

“They’re all dead,” Adam says, calmly, it’d feel better if he yelled at him. “Everyone from back then is dead. But not me.”

Lawrence wants to cover his ears. Crawl into a corner. Away.

Why does Adam do this to him? He was fine. He was happy.

“I know you’ve got the nicest fucking life now,” Adam goes on, spitting out every word, “and that I’m a fucking lowlife and you’re so ashamed of me, but am I so fucking far below you that I don’t deserve an answer on a goddamn email?”

Lawrence can’t answer him. Adam’s bringing him back there. Didn’t want to be there, wanted to be here.

Have to get out.

Eventually, Adam seems to abandon all hope to get an answer. Sixteen years of resentment has risen to the surface, and still, he just feels empty. The hopelessness he got from talking to Lawrence every day apparently doesn’t disappear even when they haven’t talked since the last time of all the thousand times they walked away from each other.

Adam gets up, takes his jacket from the chair. He stares at Lawrence for a few seconds, either waiting for an answer or trying to think of one himself. But eventually, he gives up, turns around and leaves.

Lawrence can’t move. His fingers clutch to the table without him realizing it, one thought, the only thing that was bigger than what they had, put him on that plane all those years ago.

_I have to get out._

It’s not until a few moments after Adam’s gone that he notices that he must’ve succeeded, because no one from his past is here. He’s in a hospital cafeteria, all alone.

 


	31. Long Time Gone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so this is actually the last chapter? Which is kind of weird, I wrote the first draft to this nonsense in 2009, but I'm pretty sure I'm done tweaking with it now. 
> 
> But wait, you cry. It says 31 of 32 chapters. AND BY GOLLY IT DOES. I'm going to post an add-on chapter in a bit, taking place a few years after this one. Just as a treat because you guys are so great
> 
> anyway here's Wonderwall

Lawrence sits there for a few minutes after Adam left. Staring into the jarringly red table doesn’t feel more or less meaningless than anything else.

When he finally gets up and walks out, he has no idea what he hopes to accomplish with that. He doesn’t know where Adam went, he doesn’t know if he lives in Washington now or if he does, where. Maybe he just went here to see him, which wouldn’t be the weirdest thing, but Lawrence can’t really imagine he would. He doesn’t get how Adam can even stand looking at him.

He goes outside, then stops. The parking lot doesn’t look any different than the last time he saw it. He somehow expected it to either be lit up with the glow of a million fairies, or at least even more empty and gray than usual, but no. It’s the same fucking parking lot. Adam’s not even on it.

Not even he can make asphalt magical, despite what it felt like earlier, back in the cafeteria. Awkward, nervous, so much broken. But they were there, it was real.

This isn’t real. It doesn’t _feel._ If this parking lot disappeared in front of him, it’d make no difference to Lawrence. He keeps telling himself that he loves the hospital, every part of it, including this fucking place, but who’s he kidding? He hates it, and he’s always hated it.

And standing here, it’s the same shit. The only thing he’s feeling is a minor annoyance with himself, a slimy burn in his stomach as his ulcer reacts to the coffee he had, and he’s tired, because he hasn’t slept right. As usual. As it’s always been.

Lawrence looks around the parking lot. Sighs.

Then he shoves his hands in his pockets, and starts walking to his car.

xxxxxxxxx

Lawrence is at his apartment fifteen minutes later. He should walk home, he knows that. He’s far from peak shape.

He always walks to work when he brings Diana. Tries to be a Good Role Model. But for some reason, she never believes him when he says he takes that walk even when she’s not with him.

Lawrence walks up the stairs, steps heavier than usual, even though he barely feels any sorrow. He realizes now that he has no real reason to go home, and the thought is… or, it’s not that bad. He’s just not used to it.

He lives for the days he gets to spend with Diana. Walking home to an empty apartment usually isn’t that hard; he’s usually too tired to think of it. But now he’s walking home with the feeling. It’s new.

When he’s almost at his floor, Lawrence’s foot stops mid-step. Seeing Adam sitting cross-legged, leaned against his front door, camera in his lap, makes him terrified and ecstatic.

Adam doesn’t look up until he puts his foot down. He probably notices him standing there, but he’s staring at his camera, brows furrowed, more memories flood back and Lawrence sinks in them completely. He looks up, and by then, Lawrence is just terrified. He wishes Adam could give him a look he could interpret.

“Hey,” Lawrence says.

He’s grateful Adam doesn’t answer.

Adam doesn’t take his eyes off him. Looks at him that way again, tries to get a read. After a last glance at his camera, he gets up, scratches the back of his neck awkwardly. He takes a step towards Lawrence.

“Can we go inside?” he mutters.

He sounds like he means something else. Lawrence doesn’t get what, it’s frustrating.

“Yeah,” Lawrence says, bristles after staring at Adam, so close so fast, and takes his keys out of his pocket. “Sure, just a sec…”

He walks past Adam, unlocks the door, opens and stretches his arm in some kind of ‘after you’-gesture. Even though now is really not the time, he can’t help but act this way. _Polite,_ but that’s it.

Adam walks past him, kicks his shoes off. He turns to Lawrence. The sight of him used to be the band-aid after walking in a pair of ill-fitting shoes his entire life.

“Don’t think you’re off the hook just because I got too pissed off to look at you,” Adam says. “I don’t want us to part ways until we’ve settled this thing, or, like, made it slightly less shitty. That’s why I came.”

Lawrence nods jittery, while being completely awash in that feeling he had to leave Adam in order to avoid. Adam deserves answers, he really does. Lawrence should be able to give him them. How the hell is he supposed to do that?

“Yeah, of course you do,” doesn’t even notice how shrill his voice gets. “It got… I sort of…”

“Lawrence,” Adam cuts through, patiently. “Breathe.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Lawrence goes on, twisting his hands, they haven’t shaken like this in years. “I’m sorry, I… I sort of… I was - I was - I wasn’t…”

“Lawrence,” Adam says, suddenly right in front of him, a beat of hesitation before putting his hands on his shoulders. “Relax. I didn’t want to… fucks sake, don’t look at me like that…”

Lawrence watches him, unsure of why Adam’s upset. He’s fine, or, not worse than he usually is. But he wants to stop doing whatever it is that worries Adam.

Adam rubs his hairline. When his eyes meet Lawrence’s again, he looks awfully tired.

“We don’t have to talk about it, okay?” he says, dropping his hand dejectedly. “There’s no point talking to you when you’re like this.”

“Like what?” Lawrence asks. Adam shakes his head.

“Fuck it. I…” Adam lifts his camera, hesitating motion. “I snapped some pictures on the bus ride. Wanna see?”

Lawrence looks at him, then the camera. For some reason, it takes him a while to catch up to the situation, and his hands are still shaking. In the middle of all the things he’s feeling right now, the things buzzing frantically and crash like frightened fireflies, he realizes that even though Adam’s getting thin wrinkles by his eyes, he’s still roughly ten inches shorter than him.

“Sure,” Lawrence says. “Sounds great.”

Adam nods curtly, but still looks like he’s scared Lawrence is going to crack if he lets him go.

“Good,” he says, turning around, facing the corridor leading to the living room. “But you’ll have to get me a fucking tour guide to get me to the nearest couch, because this place is a goddamn maze. You couldn’t think of a better way to waste your money?”

Lawrence smiles uncertainly as they walk down the hall.

“I don’t have your creativity,” he says. “I could get some hookers over if it makes you feel at home.”

Adam scoffs.

“Now would be when we kick each others’ asses,” he mutters as they reach the living room. Lawrence turns to him.

“Huh?”

Adam swallows, sits down on the couch and considers just letting it go. Lawrence doesn’t seem ready to handle memories, even though they’re happy. Some of them.

“When we met the first day,” he ends up saying anyway. “At school, and I said something about how your dad must’ve bought you that outfit. You said something about hookers. Because I looked like white trash, I guess.”

Lawrence sits next to him, seemingly unbothered that they’re actually touching, thigh grazing thigh, not a lot, but the fucking universe should implode because it’s so great, smiling, still nervous.

“I really wanted to kill you,” he says softly.

Adam smiles, too. He’s not all that present in the moment. Even though he barely remembers it, he’s back there, the memory of it. The air was dusty and dry, he’d only been there for a few minutes but still felt like he had bugs under his skin. Greasy, blond hair in front of him, by the foot of the stairs.

It makes it even weirder, seeing the man in front of him now. His hair is perfect.

“You were entitled to,” Adam says. “I was an annoying little shit.”

“You sure were.”

“You weren’t much better,” Adam grins, picking up his camera, and starts swiping through the pictures. The moment’s past, but they’re still there, touching. “Look at this, I took it through the bus window. There was a kid outside when we stopped in Queens…”

“Right, I have to ask,” Lawrence cuts through. “Why did you come here? And… where from?”

Adam quiets for a moment, before looking down, blushing.

“I still live in Brooklyn,” he says. “But I got a shoot in Garrett Park, and I wasn’t going to stop by at first, but then I got in that fight, so…”

Lawrence isn’t sure whether to laugh or cry.

“You got on a half-hour commute with that wound?”

Adam smiles stupidly and grazes the bandage on his arm.

“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“You’re an idiot,” Lawrence says in a nervous chuckle. “There weren’t any hospitals nearby?”

He hears that it’s a stupid question a few seconds too late. Adam doesn’t even answer him, just gives him an undetermined look before picking the camera back up. If Lawrence wants to pretend that he’s been accessible enough for Adam to show up without an excuse, he doesn’t want to be the one to take that fantasy from him.

“Check this out,” he says, leaning closer for Lawrence to see the small screen. “This is just the seat in front of me. But the fucking bus was so shaky that it turned out kind of cool on picture. Sort of melted ice cream-ish. What do you think?”

Of course Adam does this at his pace. It’s who he is.

Even though he’s been waiting sixteen years for a goddamn Email.

The camera is another thing Lawrence instinctively knew from when they were kids. This is definitely not the same one. Or, all nice cameras look more or less the same, but just the way Adam holds it. Lawrence remembers what it was like with his first one; fingers on the buttons, how he straightened the shoulder strap if it got twisted. Even if he could be careless with it, he always held it like it was his way out of the place he hated so.

Adam’s hands are used to this camera. He barely dared touching the old one because it meant so much, but this one is melted into his hands, they’re a unit. He knows every inch of it, flips it over, fidgets with the objective, like it’s all he’s ever done.

The same eagerness over something as pointless as _photos,_ as he had when he was eighteen.

It doesn’t matter how much his face has changed. Lawrence’s gaze sticks on Adam’s hands more frequently through the night, and he gets more convinced by the second that Adam hasn’t aged a minute since that day at the airport.

He’s not sure how long they sit there; his grasp on time sort of disappears in the fact that Adam’s next to him, and the black, slimy grief that suddenly comes back to life. But after a while, he grabs Adam’s hand, he quiets mid-sentence and bristles, looks at Lawrence like he didn’t know this would happen, but he did, he must’ve.

Lawrence takes a shaky breath, forces himself to maintain eye contact. Tries to focus on what he wants to say, instead of the panic. He’s going to do what he should’ve done all along. They’re close now, so close.

“Adam,” he says. Voice almost steady. “I… I couldn’t keep in touch with you. You get it? I was scared. I was scared of everything that made me… feel stuff, at college and stuff, and there wasn’t… there was no _room_ for…”

He’s not sure how to go on. Adam looks at him, wide-eyed, maybe a little hopeful, before his eyes narrow.

“For what?” he asks. He tries to sound composed, but isn’t quite there.

“I…” Lawrence sighs. It sounds so stupid when he has to say it out loud. “I don’t know. I don’t know how it turned out like this. During the first year, you were the only thing getting me through, and then I got… I got scared. I…”

He silences abruptly when he sees that Adam looks at him like he’s been struck. They’re still sitting next to each other, touching, how can it feel like Adam’s a mile away?

 _“Scared?”_ Adam echoes sharply. “Of _me?”_

Lawrence swallows. Says nothing, anything he says from now on will just make it worse. Adam glares at him, searching his face for something making it worthwhile to stay.

“I used to be the only thing you weren’t scared of.”

Lawrence wants to punch himself in the face when he hears the way Adam says it. It must be more obvious than he thought, because Adam’s suddenly ripped his hand from his grasp and punches him in the arm, it doesn’t hurt, he probably just wants to show that he’s frustrated, and you can’t really blame him.

 _“Fucks_ sake, Lawrence,” Adam growls. “You can’t get a heart attack every time I try to say you’ve fucked up! Is it so hard to get that you _occasionally_ fail at shit?”

Lawrence rubs his hand against his face, trying to remember to breathe. Doesn’t want to get Adam worried again. Tries to think of what Adam’s saying, actually _think,_ not just use it as an excuse to panic.

“I don’t want to fail with you,” he says. “With this. I think that’s it.”

Hurting Adam is the only thing that still shakes him. And he’s still been doing it, nonstop, for all these years, and he hasn’t even realized that he’s doing it.

Somehow, he knows it can’t be fixed. It’s broke, and they’re the ones who broke it. The most beautiful thing they’ll ever have, but it won’t survive this. Lawrence sees it now. All the times they left each other.

And all the times they stayed.

Adam punches his arm a few more times, but eventually leans back, as swiftly as he started. Eventually, he puts the camera on the coffee table, with a carefulness that looks almost funny compared to how violent he was a second ago. Lawrence looks at his hands. Adam’s leaving. Panic. Again.

“I haven’t done anything right,” he says. “I can’t. It’s like a roadblock in my brain. I married a… an amazing woman that I couldn’t love, because… I couldn’t. It was impossible. I scored a job that I’d been dreaming of my entire life, and I made it another add-on to my nightmares. I don’t know why, it’s just the way it is. But seriously, if I fuck up marriages and work and shit I can always get more of… just imagine how badly I have to fuck up something like… this.”

Adam doesn’t even look at him while he’s talking, and doesn’t answer him when he’s done. When they’ve been quiet for so long that Lawrence tries to think of something else to say, Adam turns to him again. The way he looks at him is like a fresh, open wound, and Lawrence is so terribly scared that it’s going to end there.

“You’re an idiot,” Adam says through gritted teeth.

Then he kisses him.

Just like the first time, by that dumpster a hundred years ago, Lawrence is so taken aback that he initially pulls back. He almost expected Adam to hit him again. He would’ve deserved it, he definitely doesn’t deserve this, but still wants more, opens his mouth and puts his arms around Adam, not sure of how far he can go. Adam doesn’t seem to mind, but takes the upper hand completely effortlessly, pushes Lawrence onto his back and holds himself upright with a hand on the couch armrest.

They’re not teenagers anymore. They don’t have their lives in front of them, they used to, even though it didn’t feel like it at the time, and everything, including this, is more of a hassle than it used to be. Lawrence hasn’t let anyone top since they had sex that first time, also a hundred years ago, but with Adam, he won’t even try.

Even though so much has changed, everything is exactly the same as it was back then. Lawrence is terrified that Adam’s going to hate him, and Adam feels betrayed. He hopes to god it won’t stay that way.

Adam at least stays with him afterwards. Lawrence almost expected him to leave him there, drained and warm and tired, because they haven’t solved anything. But Adam lays down, head on his chest and one arm haphazardly draped across his stomach. Lawrence rakes his hand through his hair.

He doesn’t care that this is a couch mainly meant for sitting, or even better, just to look at, rather than lying in, or that Adam’s sweat is more cold and clammy than sexy at this point. Everything’s easier now than it ever was since he left. Probably easier than the time before, too, or he wouldn’t have put all that energy into repressing into.

Or he couldn’t think of it because it was just too good.

Adam leaves it for a few minutes. Then he sits up, sighs heavily and turns to him.

“You’re not getting away that easy,” he says gravely. “We could’ve done this whenever, whenever you wanted, you could’ve… it would’ve been like you never left. You knew that. But you never came back. I… I fucking _waited_ for you.”

That tone in his voice again.

“Is that really it?” Adam goes on. Not even accusingly, just genuinely wondering. “It was so fucking good that you couldn’t handle it? Was that why you never got in touch?”

Lawrence puts a hand on top of his.

“I was heading for something I’d worked my entire life for,” he says.

“And there was no place for me in it?” Adam cuts through, venomously.

Lawrence sighs.

“Yeah, there was. Or, I don’t know… I wasn’t thinking like that. I was eighteen, damn it. I was dumb. You remember what it was like, right?”

Adam gives him a look. Like Lawrence will never get it, which he probably won’t. He’s been gone too long.

“Yeah,” he says, turning away. “I remember.”

Lawrence has to hold his hand even tighter, because it feels like he’s disappearing again. Adam will never understand how important he is. He’ll never understand, and it’s all Lawrence’s fault, because he was the one who kept him away when it all happened.

Adam would know how badly Lawrence needed him if he’d seen him through all those sleepless nights in college, when the darkness closed in on him. Or when he was an adult and should’ve gotten past it, and were writing a rapport on a surgery that had gone wrong and had to lock himself in the bathroom, sat there with his hands over his ears to close out all those goddamn voices.

Those voices that were so much like his own.

Lawrence hopes Adam will give him a chance to tell him all of that. Time never used to move this fast. It won’t slow back down.

“I’ve loved you since I was sixteen, Adam,” Lawrence says. “I just couldn’t show it, not even the way you did. I… I’m not sure I’ve gotten better at it at all.”

Adam turns to him. Searches his face again.

“If I may say so myself, I’ve been pretty good at patching you back up,” he says gently. “But maybe you’re past that at this point.”

Lawrence nods slowly.

“I think so, too.”

Adam keeps staring at him. Lawrence is convinced he’s going to get up and leave, but then he feels slim fingers intertwine with his own. Fits perfectly. Some things don’t change.

Lawrence pulls Adam back down to him. He wants to be patient, moments have to last and whatnot, but it doesn’t feel like they have the time. He has to be as close to Adam as he can, they’ve lost enough time as it is.

Adam puts his head on his chest again. He doesn’t think the way Lawrence does. He doesn’t have to make the most of it. Considering all the time they’ve wasted, they might as well waste some more. Since they are the way they are, they’ll probably spend half of the time they have left clearing out all the shit they’re dragging around, and right now, he just wants to sleep.

He closes his eyes. Lawrence won’t sleep for hours, because he has to cherish every second. And no matter how long it takes for him to give up, he’ll beat himself up tomorrow for sleeping at all.

That’s the way he is, it’s the way he’ll always be.

Their hands hold on. Adam drifts off, and tomorrow, they’ll start the search. He hasn’t found it yet, because he needs Lawrence to find it. But he’s certain there are dumpsters with stolen cigarettes where they can stay forever, apartment in sleeper cities where you don’t get beat up by your mom.

A promised land they never got when they were kids.


	32. Bonus: Coming Back

Hey dudes. This... isn't part of my original version of the story, and honestly most of it is a result of being horny as hell a few weeks back. It's not really an epilogue; more of a treat for you because you're the cutest. It feels kinda weird because unlike most of the fic, it's previously unpublished, so please be gentle

I really want to thank you guys. The ones who stuck with this long-ass stupid thing have been super kind to me and legit every single comment has made me squee (which was occasionally awkward because I usually read my email on public transport)

If you want to chat elsewhere I have a tumblr: [bump-into-things.tumblr.com/](http://bump-into-things.tumblr.com/)

(also this chapter made me have to raise the rating. whoops.)

_______________________

The traffic is an absolute nightmare. Lawrence rubs his sleeve against the inside of the windshield. His fellow travelers only appear as glowing headlights in the darkness outside. He knows he’s not the only one in a hurry to get home, but he can’t help but feeling more entitled to being stressed than whatever it is they’re rushing to.

Adam’s probably going to hold this against him, too. Even though he doesn’t drive, he hates the traffic here, but it’s all part of the bigger picture, which he also hates.

Lawrence felt bad about Adam having to leave Brooklyn. He loved it there, a lot more than Lawrence ever even liked Washington. Brooklyn was his fresh start, the place where he actually proved to himself that he could make it on his own. Washington was just another place Lawrence went to be miserable, but in the end, there was really no question which one of them would have to adjust to the other. Lawrence is the one with the kid, and though he knows there was an honest attempt, Adam loves Diana too much to want to move away from her, too.

This morning was one of the many times now days that Lawrence could barely fathom how lucky he is. These Saturday mornings with Adam’s feet on the chair across from him, laughing at something Diana says, almost spilling his cereal. Diana watched Netflix afterwards as Lawrence dragged Adam back to bed, made love in slow languor with the thunder rumbling outside.

That morning will be far away when he finally gets home tonight, he knows that. But he tries to keep its warmth with him, even though it will be the last thing on Adam’s mind.

xxxxxxxxx

Adam’s eyes are cold and wild when Lawrence comes home, hands trembling as he hugs himself. He practically leaps off the couch when Lawrence walks in, backing away from him like he’s scared of getting hit.

Lawrence knew this would happen. It’s not the first time. He likes to think he’s done an okay job at mending the wounds he left on Adam’s trust that first time he left, but then there are times like these. He forgets time at work, there’s an emergency patient, phone battery dies. These tings happen. Adam knows this. The question is if he will ever accept it.

“Adam,” Lawrence says, one hand reached out, an attempt at calming. “There was an emergency transplant. The backup call had gotten drunk, he wasn’t fit for…”

Adam starts shaking his head before he’s even finished the sentence. Lawrence stops talking when he covers his ears.

“Shut up, shut up, you _fucking_ asshole,” Adam hisses. The whole scene would be childish if it weren’t for that tone in Adam’s voice, the quiver of underlying, very adult sorrow. “You could’ve called! One goddamn _text_ is all I need, you _know_ that, you _fucking…”_

Lawrence strides up to him, putting both hands on his face.

“I know, Adam, I know, I’m sorry, I…”

Adam pushes his hands away, tugs desperately at his own hair. Lawrence hates these times. Hates how his first thought is that Adam’s unreasonable, these things _happen,_ he’s a doctor, a father, and Adam still expects him to live his entire life available to him. Every time Lawrence leaves his phone unanswered, he breaks, and it’s an unfair reaction. But then he remembers.

Adam would’ve been fine with it, if he trusted Lawrence to come back.

Lawrence waits for Adam’s breathing to slow down, his hands to unclench from his scalp. Then he steps up to him, slowly wrapping him in his arms. Adam’s still taut, trembling.

“I’m sorry,” Lawrence repeats softly. “Okay? I’m sorry.”

Adam’s breath is fast and hard on his shoulder. Lawrence almost expects him to push him away again, but then, too fast for him to even register, Adam slips one hand to the back of his neck and pulls him into a bruising kiss, all teeth and desperation, and Lawrence almost trips across his feet. He was prepared on pretty much anything but this.

Adam starts tugging at his coat lapels, damp with the misty rain, stepping up on his toes to make up for those ten inches of height difference. He shudders when Lawrence’s hands slip under his tee; he’s still cold from outside, but there’s no way Lawrence is going to stop touching him.

“Bedroom,” Adam says hoarsely when he manages to break away. Lawrence nods into his hair, wraps an arm around his waist and pushes him back. When the back of Adam’s legs hit the bed, he collapses, Lawrence’s weight on top of him, the familiarity, the comfort. A sudden pang of it hits him, how lucky he is, that he gets to have it after being without it for so long.

He undoes Lawrence’s belt buckle, feels Lawrence groan against his neck. Frustration builds as Adam wrestles out of his t-shirt, but before long, like so many times before, they’re naked in each other’s arms. Adam digs his nails into Lawrence’s neck, as if to remind him of why they’re doing this.

“Don’t make me wait for you again,” he mumbles against Lawrence’s mouth, tugging slightly at his hair both to break their kisses and because he knows that drives Lawrence out of his mind.

Lawrence gently draws the back of his fingers against Adam’s cheek. The way he looks at him makes Adam want to hide, he’s _too_ naked like this, so needing and so obvious with it.

“It’s going to happen again, Adam,” Lawrence says softly. “We’re adults, we have jobs. Mine’s more important than yours, but still…”

Adam shakes his head at his terrible joke. All this suddenly feels like a goddamn miracle, how he fell in love with an unhappy teenage boy with scraped-up fingertips and the person on top of him now is a middle-aged man, talking about how to line their schedules up.

“I’ve waited enough for a goddamn lifetime. Especially for you.”

Lawrence kisses his neck again, and Adam almost forgets what they were talking about. When Lawrence speaks up, his words are soft and slurred, like he’s drunk on Adam’s skin.

“I know I can’t make up for what I did… but I think I can at least… take your mind off it…”

He trails kisses down Adam’s chest, nips across his navel. It’d be so easy just to get lost in it. Lawrence feels bad enough to do whatever he wants. And Adam knows how talented his tongue can be.

Adam laces his fingers into Lawrence’s hair just as he plants a kiss on his hipbone, pulling his head back. Then he puts a hand on his shoulder, turning him over, before reaching into the nightstand for the lube. Lawrence looks at him, eyes wide, as Adam coats two fingers with lube and slips them inside himself.

“You didn’t do any other guys when you were away, did you?” Adam murmurs as he works his fingers deep inside, seeking. Lawrence shakes his head, transfixed at Adam’s hand.

“You know I didn’t. I didn’t want anyone else. Just you.”

Adam groans as his fingers brush across his prostate.

“All those years… without this. Must’ve gotten lonely.”

Lawrence gets an almost pained expression as Adam straddles him. His wrist brushes Lawrence’s stomach as he grinds down on his hand.

“Adam, let me…”

“Sssh,” Adam says, leaning his forehead against Lawrence’s. He’s starting to pant. “Tell me. What did you think of? With Alison, all those goddamn nurses, when you really wanted me. How did you manage? You must’ve had fantasies.”

Their cocks brush together, Lawrence puts a hand on Adam’s neck, leans in for a kiss. Adam pulls back.

“Tell me. You can fuck me after you told me.”

Lawrence releases a shaky breath. When he strokes Adam’s hair off his forehead to look him in the eye, Adam feels naked again, open completely.

“I thought of you. That one time we had together, and how angry you were. You kept kissing me like you really wanted to bite my lips off.”

He puts his hands on Adam’s hips, grinds them together just once, like he knows he’ll lose it otherwise.

“I kept imagining finding someone… who tasted like you did, the same disgusting instant coffee and cigarettes.” He’s talking directly into Adam’s ear now, like he’s telling a secret. “But I didn’t find them. I just had the memory, while jerking off in the shower… there’s no one else like you, I should’ve known…”

Adam moans just at the image of it. Lawrence, crammed in the shower cubicle in his dorm, impatient teenage hand on his dick and Adam’s voice in his head.

“Keep talking,” he says, voice trembling, as he poises himself onto Lawrence’s cock, sinking down slowly, the familiar stretch. Lawrence seems to hold his breath at first, but eventually finds his words.

“The first time we fucked after you found me…” he says, almost growling the words out, and takes hold of Adam’s hair. “I knew right away. I couldn’t be without this again. Without you… it was the only thing that made sense.”

He cranes Adam’s head back, locking his lips on his exposed jugular. Adam’s eyes fall shut.

“I was pissed at you that time, too.” Lawrence’s stupid leather couch, Adam’s camera forgotten on the coffee table. Lawrence’s fear, how hesitant he was when he took Adam’s hand, like he wasn’t sure he was allowed.

“I know,” Lawrence says into the hollow of his throat. “I thought it was the last time, I tried to remember… lock everything in, how you tasted, the sounds you made…”

His teeth are on Adam’s earlobe. Adam loses the rhythm of his thrusts but it doesn’t matter, it’s something he knows, it’s all he really needs. Lawrence wraps his hand around his cock, drawing out a gasp.

“I thought you’d leave right after, so I… I kept wanting to draw it out but I couldn’t, I just wanted to see you come, I couldn’t, I’d wanted it for so long that I…”

Adam comes with a strangled cry, spilling himself over Lawrence’s hand. He’s still loose and limp as Lawrence flips them over, keeping one hand pinned over Adam’s head as he thrusts frantically. He grazes Adam’s prostate and pants hotly against his ear. If Adam could’ve gotten hard again already, he would’ve.

“I already knew,” he says. Lawrence hitches his knees up, thrusting frantically. “Right then. I couldn’t leave you again, knowing… I’d be without this, I couldn’t…”

Lawrence fingertips dig into Adam’s thigh when he comes. He probably would’ve drawn blood if he had any nails to speak of. Adam draws loose strands of hair out of his eyes, it’s damp with sweat. It’s possible he dozes off afterwards.

xxxxxxxxx

When he comes back to himself, Lawrence is still next to him. He’s fidgeting near his chin, and Adam’s about to tell him to stop biting his nails, before he realizes Lawrence is wiping away tears.

“What is it?” he says, hauling himself up to sitting position.

Lawrence glances at him, then turns away. His voice is off when he answers.

“It’s my fault that you’re like this. I fucked up, and it’s irrevocable. I forget about it sometimes.”

Adam is about to feel guilty. Then he remembers; this isn’t his thing to feel guilty about. He puts his hand on top of Lawrence’s.

“We both did. You’re just… better dealing with it than I am.”

“It’s not that,” Lawrence says, turning to him again. “I can deal with it because I know that I got you. You don’t know that… with me. It’s my fault.”

“It is. I don’t care, though.”

Adam squeezes his hand until Lawrence turns to look at him.

“You don’t need to tell me you fucked up. I know you did. It doesn’t change the fact that I love you. Like, tons.”

Lawrence shakes his head, wiping his eyes again. Adam smiles.

“I took you back, you know?” he says. “I had every opportunity not to. I could’ve stayed in Brooklyn, made a living, been miserable. It’d been simple. I didn’t want it. I wanted you.”

Lawrence runs his hand through Adam’s hair, leans down and presses desperate kisses tasting like tears onto his mouth. Adam lies back, complying.

He’s not worried about the future. They’ve already survived one.

 


End file.
